Algerian Finance Minister Abderrahmane Raouya revealed that the budget deficit reached 1976 billion dinars (approximately 16 billion dollars) until the current month (May), which is an unprecedented number in the country's history, at a time when the government expected the deficit of the regular budget to reach 20 billion dollars at the end of the current year.
Minister Raouya emphasized before parliamentarians that, “Algeria will not resort to external borrowing or unconventional financing (printing money), but will rely on traditional internal financing, especially Bank of Algeria dividends as well as collection of levy.”
Raouya said during his presentation of the supplementary budget for 2020 that "the government was forced to review its figures regarding oil revenues, as it expects oil sector revenues to decrease to 20.6 billion dollars, compared to 37.4 billion dollars that were expected in the first general budget for 2020."
With regard to raising fuel prices, Raouya justified this proposal with the pressure the budget suffers from the state’s support for this material, stressing that the increase should be accompanied by inspection campaigns targeting merchants and dealers with the aim of not exaggerating and rushing to raise the prices of their products and services.
He pointed out that a committee is currently working on studying all proposals with a view to finding mechanisms to direct this support to those who deserve it, including a fuel supply card granted once per year to every citizen, and this card covers a minimum consumption that is covered by the support, so that its holder will have to pay the real price of fuel after consuming the quantity specified in the card.
Source (New Arab newspaper, Edited)
