Reviewing his achievements since his appointment two years ago, the Governor of the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) Naji Issa said that it is clear that the stability of the Libyan dinar is not achieved by the CBL alone; rather, it relies on fiscal discipline, the unification of spending channels, and a serious commitment to the unified agreement by all parties.
Issa was speaking in an extensive interview published yesterday by a leading global banking magazine Central Banking. The interview sought to cover the trajectory of monetary and fiscal reform in Libya over the past two years.
Issa considered the key six highlights of his tenure to be: Unified Budget, Instant Salary, e-payments, POS Terminals, Instant Payments and the Exchange Rate.
Unified Budget:
The first Unified National Budget in over 13 years; the Central Bank played a pivotal role in driving its adoption, with the current focus shifting from mere approval to disciplined implementation."Ratibak Lahzati" (Instant Salary) System:
Registered users rose to approximately 1.75 million employees out of a total of roughly 2.2 million (a 79% participation rate); salary delivery times dropped from an average of two weeks to just a few hours, alongside improvements in data quality and oversight.Electronic Payments:
Transaction value surged from approximately 71.4 billion dinars in September 2024 to around 643 billion dinars by the end of July 2026, with projections indicating the figure will exceed one trillion dinars by the end of 2026—a first in Libya's history.Point of Sale (POS) Terminals:
The number of active devices increased from approximately 67,700 to around 209,000.Instant Payment (LyPay and OnePay):
Subscriber numbers grew from 55,400 to approximately 7.73 million, while the number of merchants rose from around 4,000 to approximately 199,300.Exchange Rate:
Two revisions to the dinar’s reference rate and the injection of foreign currency through official channels, aiming to narrow the gap with the parallel market to 5%.
It is this last policy point that Issa has failed disastrously in with the dinar peaking over LD 9.50 per dollar on the black-market in the last two days. The official rate is around the LD 6.50/dollar.
It seems the more dollars the CBL pumped into the market, the more demand grew – failing disastrously in not bringing the margin to within Issa’s 5 percent.
Issa, it will be recalled, had famously vowed publicly to bring the rate down to less than LD 7 /dollar.
It is this policy that Issa insists needs fiscal discipline, the unification of spending channels, and a serious commitment to the Unified Spending Agreement by ‘‘all parties’’.
Issa, it will also be recalled, has accused both the Tripoli and Benghazi Libyan governments of uncontrolled public spending.
He also briefly threatened to resign on 10 August before, it seems, he was persuaded to reconsider. The assumption is that he was assured both governments would control their spending.
Today, the LD is still trading around 9.50/dollar!
Central Bank of Libya Governor Naji Issa Tenders Resignation