Algerian foreign exchange reserves rose

Algerian foreign exchange reserves rose to $133 billion in June, the OPEC member said on Monday, adding it would spend the money on developing its economy rather than ‘the adventure’ of a sovereign wealth fund.

The north African nation's record reserves at the end of June 2008, reported by state newspaper El Moudjahid, represent a 20 percent rise from $110 billion at the end of calendar 2007, itself a 42 percent increase from the previous year.

The country of 34 million has built up reserves and repaid most of its foreign debt thanks to high oil and gas prices. But Africa's second-largest country by area is struggling to reform a Soviet-style command economy reliant on oil and gas, dominated by loss-making state banks and blighted by red tape, graft, inadequate access to credit and a weak private sector.