Algerian president forgives farmers' debts

Weeks before his re-election bid, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika announced Saturday that the government will cancel billions of dollars (euros) worth of debt owed by farmers and livestock raisers, the state-run news agency reported.

 

Voters in the gas-rich north African country go to the polls for presidential elections on April 9. Bouteflika is running for a third term, an option that parliament gave him recently by changing the constitution.

 

Speaking to an agricultural conference, Bouteflika said banks were immediately required to stop efforts to collect debts owed by farmers and raisers totaling 41 billion dinars ($5.2 billion/euro4.1 billion), the APS news agency reported.

 

"The state has decided to totally erase the debts of farmers and livestock raisers, and the public treasury will buy up these debts," he told the gathering in the northeastern town of Biskra, according to APS.

 

The announcement came as part of a raft of state measures aimed to benefit agricultural workers — such as doling out money for the construction of greenhouses, improvements on the buildings used by livestock raisers, and aid for exporters of dates, among other measures.

 

The report did not refer to the global financial crisis, which has prompted some Western governments to inject huge amounts of money into troubled sectors of their economies.

 

Algeria is largely unaffected by the global recession because it has little financial or commercial ties to the rest of the world, a very small banking sector and no stock exchange. State-owned firms dominate the economy.

 

The country is 90 percent dependent on hydrocarbon exports, and concern is growing that oil prices driven down by the international recession could make Algeria's large state spending program unsustainable.

 

Algeria is the world's seventh-largest gas producer and 14th-largest oil producer, with an estimated US$142 billion in cash reserves, the central bank has said.