In recent years, Algeria’s foreign trade has been subject to numerous restrictions, some of which are decreed through notes from the Association of Banks and Financial Institutions (Abef).
A state of affairs that made the Circle of Reflection on Business (Care), an Algerian think-tank that is interested in the world of economy and business, react.
The last note dated from the Abef dates back to April 24 and announces a new procedure by which the domiciliation of import operations must require prior authorization from the Algerian Agency for the Promotion of Foreign Trade (Algex).
The latter must first ensure that the product to be imported is not manufactured locally. Many of the many restrictions on imports in recent years have passed through this channel of the Abef and it is about this process that CARE wonders, notwithstanding the impact of the measure on “the supply of the national market in goods finished products, inputs and essential materials for producers and investors, as well as for customers”.
“With regard to such an important orientation that the authorities wish to imprint on the national policy on foreign trade over the long term, the implementation mechanism would benefit in all respects from being established in an open, transparent manner and on the basis clear and indisputable legal frameworks”, writes the think-tank in a note entitled: “Is the ABEF empowered to intervene in the management of foreign trade? “.
Recalling that the banking law in force stipulates that the Bank of Algeria is the sole regulator of the banking sector, Care stresses that a “letter intended for the Abef is not part of the instruments for implementing public policy, as provided for in the Algerian legal structure”.
For Care, this recourse to “circular ways” is not the right method, explaining that “it rather contributes to creating an atmosphere of uncertainty, insofar as what has been established by such fragile instruments may, tomorrow, to be abandoned in an equally untimely manner”.
“A major turning point”
It is precise, we read again in the Care press release, this kind of situation that the investors who complain about the legal instability in Algeria denounce.
“The passage through the Abef is symptomatic of this drift: the banks find themselves transformed into censors of the activity of their client companies, where they are supposed to be the financial advisers and the guides”, asserts the think tank. Algerian.
Beyond this twist in form, the think tank raises an important fundamental problem and speaks of a “major turning point in the external trade policy followed until now by our country”.
This turning point concerns what looks like a questioning of the liberalization of trade instituted thirty years ago with Algeria’s passage from a command economy to a market economy.
The establishment of a procedure closing the internal market to any locally manufactured product “openly turns its back on the principle of freedom of trade laid down since the mid-1990s”, estimates Care.
The Cercle de Réflexion sur l’Entreprise cited in particular Article 2 of Ordinance 03-04 of July 19, 2003, which provides that “apart from products relating to security, public order or morality, import and export transactions are freely exercised”.
With regard to a “substantial change of direction”, the think tank considers that this must be accompanied by a change in legislation, in order to “keep the framework governing foreign trade its coherence and its full compliance with the rule of law”, and the implementation of such a new policy must be “displayed through an implementing regulatory text (decree or order) which is promulgated beforehand in the Official Journal, and not indirectly of a letter sent inadvertently to a banking association”.
