The Vice Chairman of the Presidential Council, Ahmed Maiteeq, said on his Twitter account that a member of the scientific consultative committee to combat the Covid-19 epidemic informed him that Covid- 19 vaccines will arrive to Libya in two weeks, and vaccinations will proceed starting with staff at covid-19 centers.
On Monday, the United Nations Support Mission to Libya (UNSMIL) said that the Libyan Council of Ministers agreed to a two-month interim budget for 2021.
This is the first time since 2014, Libya has had one unified national budget. This brought together the relevant parties from both sides of the country to reach an agreement.
They agreed to a two-month budget rather than a full year, to allow for the newly formed Presidency Council to decide on the complete budget for 2021.
The UNSMIL noted that the unification of the budget followed the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Libya’s (CBL) decision to allocate a no-interest loan to commercial banks, in order to reduce the backlog in uncleared cheques.
“This decision will not address the underlying cause of what is known as a credit crunch, but it will reduce pressure on the banking system,” the statement read.
Member of the joint technical committee tasked with unifying the exchange rate, Musbah Al-Akari, said during a televised interview for WTV channel and Tabadul Platform that there will be no liquidity problem by the end of February, pointing out that the cash is available in Tripoli, Zliten, Misrata, Al-Zawia and other areas in the Eastern region. Meanwhile, the cash flow will be improved in the remaining areas.
Al-Akari also revealed that foreign exchange sales amounted to 3 billion dollars, which is equal to 13 billion and 410 million dinars.
The committee member admitted that there is a new issue, which is the reluctance of some commercial banks to accept cash deposits, stressing that resolving the problem throughout Libya needs time.
He promised that the liquidity criss will belong to the past very soon, while blaming commercial banks and their departments for the lack of liquidity in the south.
Al-Akari announced that there are banks that set their cash withdrawal limit to 10 and 5 thousand LD, such as the Jumhouria Bank, the National Commercial Bank, the Aman Bank in Misurata, the Wahda, as well as the Bank of Commerce and Development, where the clearing system goes through “pitfalls”, stressing that the problem will be resolved the day after tomorrow, at the latest.
The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) has affirmed its rejection of the Belgian government request to the UN Sanctions Committee aimed at lifting the freeze to deduct part of Libya’s frozen bank assets in Belgium.
In a statement, the LIA confirmed that it had no contractual relations with the Belgian GSDT, owned by the Belgian Prince Laurent Foundation, which submitted the request.”Belgium’s request to lift the asset freeze is unjustified and contradicts the resolutions of the UN Sanctions Committee.
We call on the UN to act appropriately and actively reject this request.” the LIA said.The LIA insisted that it is a separate legal and financial entity to the Libyan state, adding that there are no legal grounds for Belgium to settle the debts of the state using funds which belong to LIA and its subsidiaries.
” Our assets belong to the people of Libya, not the state,” the LIA added.The request has been made on behalf of a Belgian entity which has no contractual relationship with either the LIA or its subsidiaries; the entity has previously been refused in similar attempts to unfreeze our assets in the past.
The LIA has already communicated clearly with both the Belgian Government and the UN Sanctions Committee to express our strong opposition to this action.LIA also reiterated the calls of Taher Sonni and the Libyan Government and calls on the UN to urgently reject this request and support LIA in fulfilling its role to preserve the wealth of the Libyan people.
On Sunday, the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) in Tobruk announced that it had stopped exporting oil through the port of Hariga.
In a statement issued by the PFG, they said that the suspension of oil exports at the Hariga port came as a result of the parties’ failure to disburse the salaries of the PFG employees and ensure their continuity without deductions.
The statement pointed out that the process of stopping exports is considered an official act, according to the agreement signed in the document, which several parties know about, including the National Oil Corporation (NOC) in Tripoli.
The PFG in the Hariga port in Tobruk announced the suspension of oil exports as a result of the non-payment of the salaries of its employees for months.
The city’s steering council and other security bodies intervened and signed an agreement to resume exports and pay salaries within a period not exceeding two weeks, which was not implemented.
Nevertheless, a source at the Zoutina and Brega ports, Ahmed Bashir, confirmed in a special statement to Sada newspaper that the oil facilities that have been closed are Sidra Port , RasLanuf Port and Al_Harika Port.
He stated the reason for closure lies in the failure to pay the salaries of the PFG, despite the NOC’s promises to them.
The official revealed this closure will not cause losses at present, because a number of tankers were enter the ports to ship oil this morning before the closure.
In the same vein, Al-Sarraj has intervened quickly instructing his Ministry of Defence to pay the delayed salaries of the PFG.
Libya’s state National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced Saturday that the general revenue for December 2020 of sales of crude oil, gas, condensates, petroleum products and petrochemicals have reached a record level of US$ 1.1 bn (1,115,210,431.95).
It said the amount is deposited in its Libyan Foreign Bank (LFB) account in line with the ‘‘current arrangements’’.
The ‘‘current arrangements’’ refers to the political agreement, the Maetig-Hafter agreement for the resumption of oil production/exports. This agreement entailed that Hafter would lift the oil blockage imposed by Hafter/allies in return for the revenues being frozen in the NOC’s LFB account until political agreement is reached on a number of issues including the equitable distribution of Libya’s oil revenues.
The NOC pointed out that these revenues do not include taxes, royalties, and payments have been made for natural gas purchases to the domestic market from Waha Oil’s partners, which amounted to 13.6 U.S. million dollars
The National Oil Corporation (NOC) announced that Waha Oil Company has completed the necessary maintenance of the main crude oil pipeline connecting the Samah, Dhahra fields to Ed-Sider terminal, which has been started on January 17, 2021 for six consecutive days and in very difficult conditions, where the welding and installation of 72 joints have been completed due to the lack of budget that ensure the safety of the NOC’s assets, which we have already expressed on many occasions.
The maintenance teams worked for long hours to achieve the objectives in record time, where this work were planned to be completed within two weeks.
However and in order to reduce the looses NOC instructed the company to minimize the time to the shortest possible and to do its best efforts to carry out required maintenance within one week time by assigning enough teams.
The co-chairs of the International Follow-Up Committee on Libya’s Economic Working Group (EWG), including Acting Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Libya Stephanie Williams and representatives of Egypt, the United States and the European Union, convened a meeting on thursday to discuss urgent economic issues including the need to manage the impacts of a unified exchange rate as well as the need to unify and consolidate a national budget.
The Governor of the Central Bank of Libya Sadiq Elkaber, the Minister of Finance Faraj Bumatari and his counterpart Murajea Ghaith participated in the meeting as well as senior diplomats representing the member states of the Berlin Conference, experts from the Libyan Economic Dialogue, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the IMF and the World Bank.
Participants agreed to address the increasing costs of basic commodities, including bread, and to implement measures to ease the banking crisis including decreasing the backlog of cheques.
Participants also agreed that, pending the prospective unification of the executive, it was vital to finance critical expenditures for the 2021 budget and finalize a unified and consolidated budget at the earliest opportunity.
This included ensuring that there was adequate funding for critical expenditures including on salaries, health, the National Oil Corporation’s infrastructure maintenance needs, and rapid investment in electricity infrastructure.
To this end, it was agreed that next Monday, UNSMIL, together with the World Bank and IMF, will convene a meeting of the CBL and Ministry of Finance to address these critical issues for the benefit of the Libyan people.
German Ambassador to Libya Oliver Owcza on Monday announced providing 400,000 euros (about 483,000 U.S. dollars) for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to support the High National Elections Commission of Libya.
“Honored to sign a German 400,000 Euros contribution to UNDP Libya in support of LyHNEC (Libyan High National Elections Commission),” Owcza tweeted.
“Legal and organizational preparations should start now to support the electoral roadmap as agreed on by the LPDF (Libyan Political Dialogue Forum),” the ambassador said.
The Libyan House of Representatives welcomed U.S President Joe Biden’s decision to lift the travel ban on Libyan citizens and allowing them to enter the United States.
Libyan Parliament Member Ibrahim Al-Zgad said the harsh ban imposed on Libyans was a sign of Trump’s ”madness,” adding that the former U.S president had issued it in ”one of his crazy moments.”
He continued sarcastically saying that Trump seemed to be affected by the ”mad cow” disease and that his decision was issued as a “dance of the slaughtered rooster” and now his term is over.
Al-Zgad said the travel ban had nothing to do with the U.S. – Arab relation, which has always been ”excellent.”