On the day of the arrival of Tripoli based Libyan Prime Minister, Abdel Hamid Aldabaiba, for a two-day official visit to Rome, Italy’s Agenzia Nova reported exclusively yesterday that difficulty in payments, uncertain rules and complex procedures, continue to hinder economic relations between Italy and Libya, despite a strong mutual interest in strengthening trade.
Aldabaiba will be accompanied by the Minister of State for Communication and Political Affairs, Walid al Lafi, the new Minister of State for Council of Ministers Affairs, Mohamed Ben Ghalboun, as well as four other deputy ministers.
Proposal to unblocking the trade impasse
To unblock this impasse, the activation of a bilateral technical table on compliance, payments, customs and legal security of trade, has been proposed by the Italian-Libyan Chamber of Commerce.
The proposal aims to overcome these critical issues through a permanent technical mechanism between the two countries, with the aim of building a clearer and more predictable framework for companies and institutions.
Structural obstacles
The critical issues that companies encounter represent ‘‘structural obstacles’’ that directly affect the possibility of operating in a stable and compliant way. These include difficulties in international payments, the report says, often push Italian companies to resort to triangulations through third countries, with increased costs and exposure to legal, tax and reputational risks.
There are also persistent uncertainties on the jurisdiction of contracts, problems in the traceability of financial flows and misalignments in customs and tax procedures. Added to this are unreliable financial instruments, such as frequently disputed letters of credit, and payment management that in some cases continues to resort to cash or indirect circuits. According to the report, there is also a “mountain” of unrecovered Italian credits, quantifiable in hundreds of millions of euros, which further weighs on the confidence of operators.
