Lybia - Growth and inflation

The inflation rate in Libya dropped to 1% in June from 12.4 percent in June 2008, the Central Bank of Libya announced last week.

The Libyan economy depends primarily upon revenues from the oil sector, which contributes about 95% of export earnings, about one-quarter of GDP, and 60% of public sector wages. The expected weakness in world hydrocarbon prices throughout 2009 could reduce Libyan government tax income and constrain Libyan economic growth in 2009.

Libya imports around 90 percent of its food and other supplies notably from Europe, where consumer prices have fallen sharply this year amid the global credit crunch.

Real GDP was expected to rise by more than 7 per cent after reaching 6.8 per cent in 2007. However, Libya still faces challenges linked to the duality of its economy. While the hydrocarbon sector allows the country to accumulate large amounts of capital, there are inadequate linkages between the petroleum and non-petroleum sectors.

Substantial revenues from the energy sector coupled with a small population give Libya one of the highest per capita GDPs in Africa, but little of this income flows down to the lower orders of society.

Worthy of note is Libya’s recently launched US$84 billion infrastructure programme. With the labour force increasing at a yearly rate of 3.5 to 4 percent, the generation of employment was also a concern.

Turkey's industrial production declines

Turkish industrial production dropped 18.5 percent in April compared with the same period of the previous year, according to data released on Monday. The latest figures released by the Turkish Statistical Institute, or TURKSTAT, show that production in the manufacturing industry shrank 20.6 percent, and 5.4 percent in the mining sector. In March, production fell 20.8 percent.

hurriyet

Moroccan expats return as economy grows

Employment ministers from 43 European and Mediterranean countries are meeting this week in Marrakech to talk about boosting jobs across a region increasingly tied together by the forces of globalisation.

Last month, growth projected at 5.8 per cent next year helped prompt the European Union to offer Morocco greater access to the EU market and emboldened Morocco’s finance ministry to propose a 2009 budget that trims income tax, raises government worker salaries and increases spending on health care and education.

Morocco still struggles with unemployment that the government estimates at 14 per cent in the cities. But while many young Moroccans seek their future abroad, a few are looking back at their country and seeing opportunity, reversing decades of endemic brain drain.

Morocco lost many emigrants in the 1960s and early 1970s, when guest-worker programmes in European countries allowed Moroccans to settle there easily. As European immigration policies have tightened, Moroccans have continued to flee their country – on student visas, tourist visas or on flimsy boats crossing the Strait of Gibraltar by night. Today some three million Moroccans and their descendants live abroad, mostly in western Europe.

“Now the tide is turning,” said Taji Eddine el Houssaini, an economics professor at Mohammed V University in Morocco’s capital, Rabat. “Moroccans abroad are deciding to come back. And these people bring their money and experience.”

“Young people are even beginning to go abroad with the intention of returning,” said Mohammed Mghari, a demographer at Morocco’s Centre for Demographic Research and Study. The trend is so recent that no firm data yet exist.Mr Amrani, the pilot, spotted the chance to make use of knowledge of the airline industry he has gained during nine years with American Airlines.

Morocco’s largely agricultural economy has been bolstered by the rising price of phosphates, of which it is the world’s top exporter, remittances and investment from Moroccans abroad and a booming tourism industry, said Mr Houssaini, the economics professor.

Morocco has so far weathered the global economic crisis but is bracing for a downturn in tourism, now one of the country’s key industries, said Faouzia Zaaboul, a senior finance ministry official.

In 2006 the government introduced a microcredit scheme aimed at university graduates that will be broadened to graduates of technical schools under the proposed 2009 budget. But so far only around 1,200 people have taken loans.

The National

Morocco to record 6.8% growth rate

The Moroccan government said it was optimistic about the economic growth of the Kingdom, which should record about 6.8% in 2008, despite the international financial crisis.

Speaking at the council of the government on Thursday, Moroccan Finance Minister Salaheddine Mezouar gave the assurance that the country was "safe" from the sub-prime crisis that has been shattering the American market, for a few months, then extended to other money markets, taking "alarming" proportions since Monday.

Morocco is not connected to the financial institutions or international investment funds involved in the sub-prime crisis, the Minister stated, all the more so as fixed rates dominate the credit system in the Kingdom.

Since last week, the Casablanca Stock Exchange suffered a real "cataclysm", which translated into a fall of some 15% in four days of trading, so much so that the business media of the country had asked the authorities to set the records straight to avoid "panic".

The Moroccan Finance Minister said that the drop is "a simple correction" which has nothing to do with the recent international financial instabilities.

In spite of the price hikes of oil, which Morocco entirely imports (over 6 million tons per annum) and the price hike of foodstuffs, the government is banking on a GDP growth rate exceeding 6% (which adds up to about US$ 70 billion) in 2008.