Libya's unemployment rate 20.74%

OPEC member Libya's unemployment rate is 20.74 percent, a leading local daily reported on Sunday, quoting the government's latest census figures.

The report, highlighting social differences in Libya, comes before a two-day meeting of the country's top legislative and executive body, the General People Congress, which begins late on Sunday. The Congress is widely expected to endorse a Gaddafi plan to distribute more than $30 billion oil money this year directly to the 5 million Libyans in a bid to lift a million out of poverty.

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

Tunisian police fire on rioting youths

Police fired guns to disperse hundreds of youths rioting over joblessness and rising living costs in southwest Tunisia, leaving one dead and several injured, government and labour union officials said.

The security forces came under assault from thrown flammable objects and were obliged to intervene to neutralise certain people who were making them," said an official in Tunis who declined to be named.

Reuters

Arab-Berber clashes shake Algeria town

Hundreds of Algerian security forces were deployed in the town of Beriane on Sunday to try to end three nights of clashes between Arabs and minority Berbers, the worst urban unrest in the OPEC producer in months.

Residents said two people, including a 67-year-old, man have been killed and dozens made homeless since the disturbances involving rival gangs of hooded young men broke out in this north Saharan town of about 35,000 on Thursday evening.

"They burn our houses, steal and kill. The hatred has made them blind," Slimane Baaziz, 51, a member of the Mozabite Berber community, said of his Arab neighbours.

"They hate Arabs. These are criminals. They want to burn and kill. But we won't let them. We will defend ourselves and respond to their attacks," said Arab resident Noureddine Bkar.

The unrest stems from long-standing local communal rivalries but shares a feature of riots that have erupted in recent months in other towns due to economic grievances -- the enthusiastic and often violent participation of unemployed youths.

The intensity of the unrest means that Beriane is likely to be seen by Algerians as a test for the government's ability to respond to social tensions at a time of growing national discontent over unemployment and lack of housing.

Hundreds of helmeted police and paramilitary gendarme reinforcements backed by water canon were entering the town to prepare for possible further trouble on Sunday evening.
Provincial governor Yahia Fehim told Reuters: "The town is in turmoil, but it is controllable."

PETROL BOMBS

Homes and kiosks ransacked by youths throwing stones and petrol bombs on Saturday night lay in smoking ruins in the warren-like residential districts of Baba Saad and Kaf Hamouda. Ruins of 10 burned shops could be seen in the town centre.

Mohamed Daghour, a 32-year-old Mozabite, said: "My 67-year-old uncle has been killed -- his body is still in the morgue. They want to exterminate us. We are not afraid, but we are determined to defend our families and our goods." Trucks evacuated tens of families from riot-hit districts.

Tensions between Mozabites -- the name given to Berbers from the M'zab valley in which Beriane is located -- and Arabs stem from economic, linguistic and religious differences and have boiled over into clashes periodically over the past 20 years.

Residents say Arabs tend to resent traditional Mozabite dominance of private commerce, while Mozabites tend to complain they are excluded from state jobs, particularly senior ones.

Mozabites speak their own Berber language, as do other Berber groups in north Africa, and practise the Ibadi form of Islam rather than Algeria's mainstream Malekite Sunni version.

Inflation causes unrest

Tunisia's consumer price inflation increased to 5.9 percent year-on-year in March from 5.7 percent in February, government figures showed on Monday. Food price inflation slowed to 8.5 percent in March from 8.6 percent a month earlier, but transport costs quickened to 6.4 percent from 4.3 percent.

Rising prices of essential goods have eaten into living standards in the north African country of 10 million. Three days of protests against rising living costs and joblessness in Tunisia's central town of Redeyef last week ended with clashes between police and demonstrators and 20 arrests.

The government has envisaged an inflation rate of 3.0 percent for full-year 2008, down from 3.1 percent in 2007. The International Monetary Fund sees Tunisia's inflation increasing to 4 percent due to soaring world commodity prices.

Reuters

ENP Assistance priorities

Activities aiming towards the reform of the social sector in the Mediterranean Partner countries will be financed from the 1,4 billion euro 2007 budget committed by the European Commission, to assist the 17 countries along the EU’s Southern and Eastern border.

Under the new European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), the other priority objectives in which concrete actions will be financed are

• economic reforms and governance,
• employment,
• competitiveness and trade

Morocco’s tourism booming

Morocco’s tourism sector is thriving as the government announced that the number of tourists visiting the kingdom grew 10 percent in the first seven months of 2007.

Around 4.3 million tourists visited Morocco with over 1 million tourists in July alone. The French (1.7 million) form the largest number of foreign visitors, followed by visitors from Spain (795,000), Belgium (285,000), the UK (261,000), the Netherlands (211,000), Germany (182,000), and Italy (164,000).

King Mohammed VI is personally involved in meetings with foreign investors, and spearheading the drive to make the kingdom one of the world’s favourite tourist destinations. Tourism is Morocco’s biggest source of foreign currency and quintessential to helping reduce unemployment and eradicate poverty in the North African country.

The government has developed an ambitious strategy, dubbed "Vision 2010", aimed at attracting 10 million tourists annually by 2010. Revenue from tourism increased 29 percent to 52.9 billion dirhams ($6.56 billion) in 2006, helping oil-importing Morocco cope with high world oil prices.