London’s Financial Times today reports that Libya’s revolutionary government has discovered a surprise windfall that will ease the country’s post-conflict transition after discovering $23 billion-worth of assets that were unspent by Gaddafi’s regime.
Officials in London and Tripoli have told the British broadsheet that: ‘The find described by one official as “the equivalent of discovering several billion dollars under the mattress” – is being hailed as a big boost to Libya’s new rulers’ efforts to run the country.
Much of Libya’s estimated $160bn of foreign assets remains frozen under sanctions imposed against the Gaddafi regime. However, sources have confirmed that the unspent assets were found this month in Libyan state coffers.
The FT reports that the Libyan government informed the UK last week that about 28bn Libyan dinars ($22.8bn) had been discovered in the Central bank of Libya.
“These are internal assets found on the Central bank of Libya balance sheet tthat should put them in gravy until well into next year. It takes the pressure off them to get overseas assets unfrozen,” the official told the Financial Times reporters.
Libya will be keen to get its upstream oil and gas businesses back into full production as soon as possible, and a massive recruitment drive for foreign talent to bring new fields into production is widely anticipated.
