By Sami Zaptia.
London, 4 January 2021:
Misrata Free Zone announced last Thursday (31 December) that it has temporarily postponed its decision to start from the 1 January 2021 charging foreign ships in hard currency for services provided. The postponement will be for one month as of 1 January.
It explained that the decision to postpone came after the Central Bank of Libya unified the official exchange rate of the Libyan dinar against foreign currencies, and in implementation of what was agreed upon in the expanded meeting of the Libyan Maritime Chamber last December.
It will be recalled that Misrata Free Zone had announced on 9 December that it would start charging foreign ships in hard currency for services as of 1 January this year. This came as the Libyan dinar lost value on the black market and it was not possible to obtain hard currency from the Central Bank of Libya at the then official exchange rate of LD 1.4 per U.S. dollar.
