An expert in maritime transport economics, Dr. Abdullah Al-Tarhouni, revealed exclusively to our source regarding the price reduction, saying: “The reduction included some commodities and all of them. It is just a temporary problem in an unstable market, as the Libyan economy is going through a stage of stagflation, which is caused by the decline in family demand, in addition to the collapse of the prices of other commodities within the domino theory that seems to be coming, but slightly.”
He added: “The decline in global sea shipping rates by more than 40% since the beginning of the year has a slight reason, but it will be obvious before Christmas and New Year’s Day. After the outbreak of the pandemic during the first three quarters of 2020, the global demand returned at a rapid pace in the fourth quarter of the year 2020, which led to a deficit in the implementation of some requests, and at the same time led to an increase in the great demand for the services of shipping companies and the lack of preparation of containers due to their overcrowding in the ports. What made it worse is the rise in oil prices as a result of the increase in demand and all these factors combined led to unprecedented inflation in the prices.”
He continued: “But, it is natural that there will be self-corrections in the market from time to time, in return for all that real estate prices remain high and unrealistic at all, and there may be hidden hands behind the exacerbation of this phenomenon. However, the final blow to small traders will be in changing the exchange rate that is supported by the stability of global oil prices and increased production from Libyan fields.”
