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By Sami Zaptia.
London, 12 December 2020:
UNSMIL announced yesterday that on 14 and 15 December, its Acting head, Stephanie Williams, and the co-chairs of the Economic Working Group of the Berlin Process including Egypt, USA and EU, will convene a technical meeting of representatives of Libya’s main financial institutions at the UN Office in Geneva to reach an agreement on critical policy reforms.
These efforts are being undertaken to address the needs of the Libyan people and establishing a more durable and equitable economic arrangement, it explained.
UNSMIL added that the meeting comes at a critical juncture for the Libyan economy, which is suffering from structural issues, aggravated by the impact of the conflict, as well as by a months-long oil blockade for most of 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Besides the loss of $11 billion in oil sales, Libyan foreign reserves have dropped significantly in 2020 due to revenue loss and high expenditures that diverted funds away from development spending. The division within the Central Bank of Libya is also causing a deepening crisis within the banking sector. These dynamics are driving inflation and creating distortions and debts that are impairing the basic functionality of the state, it added.
The meeting will be an opportunity to make progress towards agreeing on a set of actions to avoid further economic deterioration. It is time to set aside partisan politics and work for the interests of the Libyan people, UNSMIL said.
