TRIPOLI: Libya’s central bank has dismissed as baseless recent rumours that the country is facing dollar shortages due to a loss of oil revenues, a bank official said yesterday.
The North African country has been struggling for nine months with disruptions in its key oil industry due to protests at oilfield and ports across the desert nation. The central bank has said it has dollar reserves worth more than $115bn.
Musbah Al Akari, head of the central bank’s markets department, said that currency speculators were spreading rumours about dollar shortages to make a profit. “These rumours are totally baseless,” he said, adding that Libyans travelling abroad were receiving their normal allocation of dollars while firms were opening credit letters for imports.
Currency dealers said trading in the parallel market was going normally. Oil production has fallen to around 200,000 barrels a day from 1.4 million bpd in summer when protests erupted. Reuters
