TVC NEWS [ALGIERS] – Algerian government has disclosed that raising fuel prices may contribute to reducing fuel smuggling to Morocco and Tunisia, which costs his country nearly $2 billion annually.
Addressing journalists, Cabinet Director Ahmed Ouyahia said “Algeria has imported $5 billion worth of fuel at global prices to sell it for a tenth of its price.”
“We supply North Africa with more than $2 billion of fuel, diesel and gasoline,” AFP reported Ouyahia as saying.
The senior official said that although the Algerian government raised fuel prices at the beginning of the new year, they remain some of the cheapest in the world and the second-cheapest within the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Algeria’s former Minister of Energy and Mines, Youcef Yousfi said earlier that 600,000 cars in Tunisia and Morocco run on Algerian fuel. Yousfi estimated that more than 1.5 billion litres of fuel is smuggled each year.
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