Written by economic expert “Ibrahim Wali”:
Why did the Central Bank cancel the activity of commercial banks in buying and selling foreign currencies and grant it instead to exchange companies and offices?
Has the Central Bank also lost confidence in public and private commercial banks, just as traders, businessmen, and citizens have lost confidence in them—leading people to hoard their money in safes? As a result, liquidity was lost, and certain banknote denominations were withdrawn in a manner that served particular interests, supposedly to inject liquidity into the Libyan state and revive the dollar at the expense of the struggling citizen. For the record, when the fifty-dinar note was withdrawn, there was no major liquidity crisis. However, when the twenty-dinar note—being the most تداول and widely used among people—was withdrawn, a liquidity crisis occurred, unlike the fifty-dinar note, which was mainly used for hoarding. The Central Bank withdrew 47 billion dinars from the two denominations and was supposed to return alternative denominations to the market for circulation, as Article (34) of Law No. (1) of 2005 stipulates that new denominations or issues must be released to replace what was withdrawn from the cash market.
The second question: Has the Central Bank truly lost control over commercial banks, especially private ones, due to the dominance of traders and speculators as a result of widespread corruption in public banks? Some corrupt traders, speculators, and owners of private banks have controlled letters of credit and monopolized the US dollar within the banking and financial sector.
The third question: Has there been a legalization of these speculators and some corrupt traders and businessmen who previously controlled and manipulated the parallel market, prompting the Central Bank to integrate them into the banking sector through exchange companies?
Thus, those who used to buy and sell dollars to Libyans outside the walls of the Central Bank—who speculated and contributed to the collapse of the national currency and tampered with the livelihood of Libyan citizens—have now been legalized by law, possessing official stamps, licenses, and influence under the title of exchange companies.
Will the Libyan citizen obtain dollars before the family, relatives, and friends of the exchange company owner do? Or will the dollar commodity be distributed fairly? We all know that exchange offices abroad are affiliated with operating banks. When you travel to any country, for example Tunisia, upon arriving at the airport and entering the main hall, you see exchange offices bearing the names of operating Tunisian banks such as Zitouna Bank, the Tunisian Agricultural Bank, Housing Bank, and others.
Therefore, exchange offices should be affiliated with banks operating in the country where you hold your account—linked to your bank account number, balance, national ID, and KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures. This would be easier to monitor than commercial banks and even the Central Bank. In addition, when you wish to purchase US dollars, the bank would grant it to you at the official exchange rate of 6.40, without a 4% profit margin on cash withdrawals or 2.5% on bank transfers. In this way, the Central Bank would benefit from the margin rather than in the absence of commercial banks.
The final point: The United States is now imposing on the Central Bank a policy of purchasing its currency at a rate of $600 million per month. It will also impose interest on these amounts, and the state will be obligated to repay them with interest. Can the Central Bank repay these sums after they have circulated among Libyans? The key question is: will these amounts return to the Central Bank, or will they end up in the vaults of speculators as happened in the past? And what will happen when the Libyan dinar depreciates further?
America is the sole winner. As usual, it exports the dollar to countries suffering from financial and economic crises—this has happened in Iraq, Somalia, and Lebanon. What is Iraq’s situation today, where it begs for food in exchange for oil, while America is present and stationed at oil fields, as it is also in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor?
We pray to God that the sale of $600 million per month to the Central Bank is not intended to fabricate a financial and economic crisis by the United States, with the aim of stripping Libya of its political and economic will and seizing the livelihood of the Libyan people.
