Economist Mokhtar Al-Jadeed said that currency market speculators incurred significant losses after betting on the rise of the dollar’s price from last November through the early months of the current year.
Al-Jadeed added that speculators bought large quantities of foreign currency below the price of eight dinars and pushed it up to about eight and a half dinars, which depleted their dinar balances.
The economist explained that the Central Bank faced severe pressure during that period, especially in the first quarter of the year, before Governor Naji Issa succeeded in curbing parallel spending and restoring balance from April onwards. Stability continued until August, followed by what he described as a “counter-attack” in September.
Al-Jadeed pointed out that speculators have only two options to try and recover their losses: either spreading rumors and lies to raise the price again, or waiting for government spending to return to its previous levels, stressing that “the fate of Libyans is in God’s hands, not in the hands of speculators.”