By Dr. Helmi Al-Qamati, Professor of Economics at the University of Benghazi
A wise man once said:
“We are heading towards the abyss, yet we keep checking our watches to make sure we are not late for dinner.”
This is more than a sarcastic aphorism; it encapsulates the tragedy of the Libyan economy.
A dinar steadily losing its value, prices devouring citizens’ incomes, a foreign exchange market plagued by imbalances, and a central bank chasing the crisis with one measure after another, as though the sheer number of decisions were proof of success!
They inject foreign currency, adjust monetary policy instruments, and announce measures. But one question exposes all this noise:
If these policies are successful, why does the citizen pay the price of the crisis every single day?
No monetary policy can save an economy from being financially drained indefinitely. Nor can the Central Bank continue going around in circles, addressing the consequences of imbalances without establishing a sustainable path towards stability.
The catastrophe lies not only in the dinar’s declining value. It lies in the fact that its depreciation has become commonplace, that measures have turned into a public performance, that meetings have become a substitute for results, and that citizens’ suffering has been reduced to a marginal detail in the calculations of those in charge.
When institutional efficiency is measured by the number of decisions made rather than their results, it becomes possible to manage collapse with astonishing administrative efficiency, without ever bringing that collapse to a halt.
