Financial analyst Khaled Al-Zantouti told our source in an exclusive statement that, in principle, maintaining the customs dollar rate below the official exchange rate helps reduce the burden on citizens. However, in Libya’s case, its actual impact remains limited because customs duties are already low on most goods, particularly essential commodities, while any effect may be more noticeable on certain luxury items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al-Zantouti explained that Libya\u2019s customs revenues are not proportionate to the country’s massive volume of imports. He noted that many importers do not pay customs duties and taxes in accordance with the law, yet still pass these costs on to consumers through higher prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that large-scale smuggling of goods to neighboring countries continues despite the fact that some of these goods are subsidized or intended for use within the Libyan market. As a result, the primary beneficiaries are smugglers and neighboring markets, while Libyan citizens are deprived of advantages that should have accrued to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Al-Zantouti stated that he does not believe increasing the customs dollar rate will generate a significant rise in state revenues, given weak oversight mechanisms and the continued prevalence of smuggling. He emphasized that consumers will ultimately bear the additional costs resulting from the decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He concluded by saying that the absence of effective state institutions means that both citizens and the state itself stand to lose. Genuine customs revenues do not enter the public treasury at the desired level, while smugglers and some traders profit at the expense of the national economy and the Libyan consumer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Financial analyst Khaled Al-Zantouti told our source in an exclusive statement that, in principle, maintaining the customs dollar rate below the official exchange rate helps reduce the burden on citizens. However, in Libya’s case, its actual impact remains limited because customs duties are already low on most goods, particularly essential commodities, while any effect may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":257331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[613,1169],"class_list":["post-257330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-libya","tag-smugglers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257332,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257330\/revisions\/257332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}