In their continuing public attempts to win over public opinion to their narrative and version of reality and lay the blame at the feet of the other, Tripoli based Libyan prime minister, Abd Alhamid Aldabaiba. and Central Bank of Libya (CBL) Governor, Saddek El-Kaber, have put out contradicting statistics to prove that Libya does, or does not have state deficit.
The public debt was ‘‘zeroed’’
Aldabaiba claims that over the past three years, his government did not record any budget deficit or public debt. Rather, he said it achieved a surplus amounting to 26.6 billion dinars. When we took over the government, he stressed, the public debt was 154 billion dinars, of which 84 billion were disbursed to the predecessor Tripoli based Faiez Sarraj government. And 70 billion were disbursed by the Benghazi Central Bank for the eastern based Al-Thani government.
He said that after taking the decision to adjust the exchange rate, Aldabaiba said his government achieved revenues from selling the currency worth 176 billion, from which the value of the public debt was paid, in addition to a surplus that exceeded 20 billion. Thus, the public debt was “zeroed” and completely extinguished.
A public debt still exists
In response, El-Kabeer said Aldabaiba’s claim that the public debt and “zeroing” or settling it is ‘‘contrary to the truth’’, and no settlement of the public debt has been made so far. This debt, he insists, still appears in the records of the Central Bank of Libya under the item “Loans and Advances” to the Public Treasury, with a total of 84 billion dinars. This, he pointed out, is in the records of the Ministry of Finance in Tripoli. This is in addition to the public debt in the records of the then split and Benghazi based CBL. This eastern debt was arranged during the period of division and is still outstanding, El-Kaber insisted.
Analysis: Where have the billions raised from the last dinar devaluation gone?
The public spat between Tripoli based Libyan prime minister, Aldabaiba, and CBL Governor El-Kaber, is extremely serious and raises huge fundamental questions that could have dire consequences for Libya.
Has the entire public debt really been “zeroed” as Aldabaiba claims, or does it still exist, as El-Kaber claims? Is one of them telling a huge lie or is one of them incompetent or manipulating facts and figures? Are they reading the official stats differently? Is the CBL faking public stats.
Either or both could and should lose complete credibility if they are exposed as not reading the statistics correctly or misrepresenting them to the public.
If so, and as Libyans and Libyan media are asking, where did the billions accrued from imposing fees in 2017 on the sale of foreign exchange, go?
