Algeria denies implementing austerity over oil prices plunge

Algeria Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Saturday the government has adopted a policy of rationalizing public spending rather than austerity to face the plunging oil prices.

"The government has drawn up a policy meant to rationalize public spending," Sellal told reporters on the margins of a visit he paid to a local smart card manufacturing unit, on the eastern suburbs of Algiers.

The Prime Minister noted that oil price decline in the global market is "an opportunity to switch the economic policy of the country to get out of oil dependency, and focus on developing local enterprises able to create wealth and job opportunities."

To do so, Sellal pledged "to encourage national competences, through lifting all bureaucratic obstacles to facilitate the creation of start-up projects."

Hydrocarbons account for 93.52 percent of the north African nation's total exports. It explicitly shows the full dependence of the nation on oil revenues to support national economy.

Oil prices witnessed spectacular drop, going from around 110 dollars a barrel in June 2014 to around 64 dollars nowadays. This unexpected scenario forced the government to froze several development projects to curb this unprecedented trade deficit in 17 years.