Libya’s state National Oil Corporation (NOC) today strongly refuted the claim by the Tripoli-based Central Bank of Libya that the NOC’s oil revenue data is inaccurate.
The National Oil Corporation (NOC) has viewed the statement of the Central Bank of Libya issued on 19/11/2020 in which the Central Bank referred to the inaccuracy of the National Oil Corporation’s data as the statement claimed, although all the previous monthly statements of the Central Bank clearly confirmed the completion of figures reconciliation processes with the National Oil Corporation which refutes the malicious claim of the Central Bank.
The National Oil Corporation strongly denounced the “fallacies and misleading information” mentioned in the statement of the Central Bank of Libya issued on 19 November 2020 regarding the revenues and the expenditure from 01/01/2020 to 31/10/2020 as the actual oil revenues during the period from 01/01/2020 until 31/10/2020 which were deposited in the Central Bank of Libya amounted to (3.7) billion US dollars which is equivalent to (5.2) billion Libyan Dinars according to the official exchange rate and not as mentioned in the Central Bank statement.
The NOC said that the holding of the oil revenues in its Libyan Foreign Bank accounts is a ‘‘temporary’’ procedure until a comprehensive political settlement is reached of which the most important outcomes shall be the fair use of the revenues among all Libyan cities and towns.
It also reaffirmed that, for its part, it has adopted full transparency and disclosure of the revenues to all the Libyan people on its website since January 2018 and called upon all the Libyan institutions in Libya particularly the Central Bank to do the same.
The NOC accused the CBL of ‘‘intransigence’’ in its ‘‘non-compliance with transparency and disclosure of the State’s expenditure have created a suitable atmosphere for the oil blockades and the Central Bank’s ambiguous policies were used as pretexts for the blockaders’’.
“In the light of the foregoing, we would like to reassure the whole Libyan people of the accuracy of the payment and collection systems and we confirm that the entire revenues of the State of Libya as well as the rights of the foreign partners are accurately documented and held in the National Oil Corporation Account at the Libyan Foreign Bank and the revenues will not be transferred to the account of Central Bank until the Bank has a clear transparency in front of the Libyan people regarding the mechanism of spending the oil revenues during the last years and the entities that benefited from such revenues in the foreign currency which exceeded the total of (186) billion US dollars during the last nine years. ” the NOC stated.
