Deficit feeds through to prices and purchasing power
LIBYA – Former minister of state for economic affairs and current chairman of Libya’s Competition and Anti-Monopoly Council, Salama Al-Ghweil, said the foreign-exchange shortfall is not merely a figure in a financial statement, but a clear warning of a deep flaw in the management of the Libyan economy.
Al-Ghweil links the crisis to mismanagement and division
In remarks exclusively to Erem News Business, Al-Ghweil argued that the shortfall’s immediate effects would be further pressure on the dinar, the exchange rate, prices and purchasing power, at a time when Libyan citizens face difficult living conditions that, he said, are entirely out of line with the scale of the country’s resources.
He stressed that the real problem is that Libya does not suffer from a scarcity of resources, but from their mismanagement, from institutional division, weak transparency, inflated current spending, and the absence of a clear economic and trade policy.
A transparent budget and spending control
He said the crisis would not be resolved by draining reserves or adjusting the exchange rate whenever imbalances worsen, but by unifying the executive authority, adopting a transparent national budget, controlling spending, subjecting appropriations and public expenditure to oversight and accountability, activating competition and anti-monopoly laws, supporting production and the real private sector, and protecting consumers and the dinar’s purchasing power.
