The halving of Algeria's foreign revenues in just a few months has had a brutal impact on the country's economy, Prime Minister Abelmalek Sellal said Sunday, describing the current situation as "difficult."
In an interview with state news agency APS, Sellal said the price of oil had fallen by 48% between January and August this year compared with the same period of 2014 and that Algeria's revenues from oil and gas exports had fallen by 44%.
"Oil market analysts are predicting that 2015 and 2016 will be the most severe years in terms of the fall in prices. The first 10 months of this year confirm this trend," he said.
"Our country has seen its foreign revenues fall by almost a half in just a few months. That shows the brutality of the shock that has hit the Algerian economy, which was in full reconstruction mode after two decades of economic recession and security troubles."
Sellal said Algeria was "still doing better" than some other countries also affected by the oil price collapse.
"But we have to act now to generate revenue and create jobs, because even if oil and gas prices return to previous levels in the future, it is not enough to cover the socio-economic development of our country in the future," he said.
Benchmark Brent crude is currently trading below $44/b, having plunged from $115/b in mid-June 2014.
OPEC ministers will meet in Vienna on December 4 to review the market share policy agreed a year ago, when Saudi Arabia persuaded the oil producer group not to cut oil production unilaterally despite plummeting prices.
