The Central Bank of Libya issued today its statement about revenues and expenses and about foreign exchange revenues and its use of cash liquidity during the whole year of 2021.
The statement states: “The expenditures of the third section represented 27% of total expenditures compared to 4% in previous years. The return on the fee on foreign exchange sales during 2021 was not used to finance any expenditure.”
It mentions that the general budget was in surplus of approximately 19.9 billion dinars and that the general budget was consolidated for the entire Libyan territory under the Government of National Unity.
It also adds: “Fuel support still accounts for the largest share of support and represents almost 50% of it, which is a problem that needs to be addressed because it causes unfair distribution and waste of public money.”
According to the central bank statement, the collection of non-oil sovereign revenue is also weak, and it encompasses: Taxes, customs and public service charges. The customs revenues are disproportionate to the amount of documentary credits opened by banks, which represents about 45% of the foreign exchange use with a value of $10.7 billion, equivalent to about 50 billion dinars while the customs revenues account for only 311 million dinars, representing 0.06% of the total credit value.
In addition , the tax revenues do not commensurate with the increase of the expenditures of Section One salaries and their provisions by 50% over the last year, and 85% of the Fifth Section of emergency expenses were spent for development purposes with approximately 6 billion dinars.
The Central Bank reported that documentary credits represent about 45% of foreign exchange uses, and that government expenditures fell from foreign exchange during 2021 as compared to previous years.
It said that although the development spending has increased by 27% during 2021, the government’s foreign exchange use was lower than in 2020.
The Central Bank has also accomplished a great achievement and remarkable improvement in providing cash liquidity for all branches of banks in Libya, where the liquidity disbursed to bank customers exceeded 35 billion dinars and the Air shipments sent to bank branches in the eastern region exceeded 2.2 billion, and 1.6 billion dinars to the southern region.
