La política económica en Argelia (1999-2002); ¿hacia una solución económica a la crisis[“Economic Policy in Algeria (1999-2002): ¿Towards an Economic Solution to the Crisis?”]

Algerian economic policy between 1999 and 2002 achieved excellent results in terms of controlling the basic macroeconomic magnitudes, appreciably improving the country’s international solvency, thanks chiefly to the sustained increase in the hydrocarbon export revenues. However, these good results have not contributed to an improvement in living conditions (consumption, housing, running water) or in the population’s economic perspectives (especially employment), nor have they contributed to resolving the serious structural economic problems that the country must face in coming years (demographic evolution, food dependence). These results have, therefore, not contributed to launching a process of economic development nor to deactivating the risk of social instability that hauts the country. This paper provides a critical analysis of the economic policy of the governments that have directed Algeria during these three and a half years (under the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika), of their results, and of the advance of the announced structural reforms. In particular, the implantation of a market economy, the promotion of the private sector, and trade liberalization are studied. Afterwards, the social base of these reforms and the degree of social and political consensus about them are analyzed. Finally, the paper reviews the principal aspects of economic policy that will determine how far this policy will contribute to offering a solution to the serious crisis that Algeria has been undergoing since 1988: the issue of employment, the creation of a free trade area with the European Union and its impact, the role of the private sector and export diversification, foreign investment, and the regulation of the nation’s principal economic sector, the hydrocarbon sector. In this context, the matter of the viability of the reforms is raised, in a country dominated by the informal economy and the circuits for perceiving rents that are parallel to the market, as well as the matter of the interaction between economic reform and political reform.