A decisive week by all standards awaits the economic negotiations in Libya, according to the information exclusively obtained by “218News” about the preparation of the 2021 budget and the accompanying understandings under the auspices of the United Nations, most notably the solution to the bank clearing crisis that has continued since 2016.
It is expected that the details of the 2021 budget will be presented to the Presidential Council, early this week and then approved, as the same source confirmed that the budget will range between 70 and 75 billion dinars, in addition to the allocations for the emergency budget file.
During this week, a source told “218News” that the unified Central Bank Board of Directors meetings under the auspices of the United Nations, with the participation of representatives of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, will expand the dialogues on the closed clearing system for some banks since 2014, and will show the features of the agreement on opening the system, after breaking the deadlock of the division and the mechanism for financing salary payment.
The former head of the Libyan Investment Authority, Mohsen Dreija, said in a Facebook post that the value of the credits granted to merchants and company owners reached one billion dollars and was expected to register two billion dollars, which is equivalent to about 11 billion dinars, in the coming days.
All these agendas remain dependent on the security of the general situation and the continued production of oil to ensure the implementation of the steps of the reform stages that some considered useless until now, as the positive aspects of the new exchange rate of the dollar were not reflected positively on citizens, with the exception of the partial availability of liquidity in some bank that was accompanied by a significant increase in prices.
