CBL transfers LD 93 million student scholarship funds to 42 countries

By Libya Herald reporter.

Malta, 12 March 2015:

The Central Bank of Libya (CBL) announced today that it has started transferring abroad over LD 93 million of student scholarship funds to cover the needs of the first quarter of 2015.

It will be recalled that because of the financial crises that Libya is currently going through as a result of the political and military infighting leading to the fall in oil production to 10-20 percent of peak post 2011 production, as well as the crash in international crude oil prices, Libya has been late in transferring scholarship funds to its overseas students.

Many students have been reporting that they are experiencing severe hardships abroad.

The issue of Libyan student state-funded scholarship funds has been further complicated by the anti-corruption/transparency battle taking place between Libya’s Audit Bureau and Libyan embassies abroad.

The Audit Bureau has claimed that some embassies had failed to open up their finances to inspection by its inspectors – as prescribed by Libyan law. As a result, it had suspended the transfer of state-funds to a blacklist of embassies.

On the 19 January, the CBL had announced that it was transferring a batch of scholarship funds to ten countries in Europe, five in Asia and three Arab and African countries. The funds had totalled LD 9,082,494 million.

On 6 March the CBL had announced that it had similarly transferred delayed payments for medical insurance of all students abroad.

The 42 countries that the CBL has announced it is transferring money to today are: