Blitz Bureau
TRIPOLI: Libya’s central bank announced a 13.3 per cent devaluation of the country’s dinar currency on April 6, setting the exchange rate at 5.5677 to the US dollar effective immediately, a Cairo-datelined report from Reuters said.
This is the first official devaluation since the bank agreed to a devalued exchange rate of 4.48 dinars to the dollar in 2020. The parallel market exchange rate is currently at 7.20 dinars to the dollar, added the Reuters report.
In September last year, the dinar slid against the US dollar in the black market due to a crisis over control of the central bank that slashed oil output and exports.
The crisis was resolved later that month following an agreement signed by representatives of Libya’s rival eastern and western legislative bodies. The agreement, facilitated by the United Nations, paved the way for the appointment of a new central bank governor. In November, the eastern-based parliament speaker reduced the tax on foreign currency purchases to 15 per cent from 20 per cent. The tax is added to the rate when people buy foreign currencies from commercial banks. The North African nation has been plagued by instability since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011, leading to a split in 2014 between eastern and western factions, each governed by rival administrations.
No unified budget The spending of the two governments in 2024 totalled 224 billion dinars ($46 billion), including 42 billion dinars for crude-for-fuel swaps, the central bank said in a statement on April 6.
Public debt stood at 270 billion dinars, it said, projecting that it could exceed 330 billion dinars by the end of 2025 due to the lack of a unified budget. In December, Stephanie Koury, Deputy Head of the UN mission to Libya, urged the country’s decision-makers to “urgently agree on a framework for spending in 2025 with agreed limits and oversight”.
