Getting out of the negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and restoring stability to the state’s financial accounts are the two primary goals of the new roadmap drawn up by the public authorities, led by the President of the Republic. The year 2023 was decisive in implementing this road map through the commitment of all economic actors, from the public and private sectors to the public administration and local authorities. As a result, macroeconomic figures and indicators for the past year show a clear improvement of the national economy, as well as the return of positive balance to the state’s public accounts.
Furthermore, some obstacles still remain, such as inflation which Algeria, like almost all other countries around the world, suffered since 2022 due to the instability of supply chains with the gradual return to the pre-pandemic situation and the rise in energy and food prices in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
In detail, the size of Algeria’s GDP in 2023 reached about 224 billion dollars, with an economic growth rate, for the same year, estimated at 4.2%, compared to initial expectations that were around 3.1%. As for unemployment, it has fallen to around 10% of the active population after a jump of more than 14% in 2021 and 2022 as a result of the health crisis. Regarding inflation, it recorded a rate of 7.8 in 2023, which remains quite high, but significantly down compared to 2022 when this rate was 9.4% and remain largely under control compared with MENA region countries that are facing double-digit inflation for the same period.
As for foreign exchange reserves, they increased by more than 15% during the last year to reach 70 billion USD compared to 60 billion USD at the end of 2022, which represents 14 months of importing of goods and services.
For its part foreign trade remained generally stable during the same period compared to 2022, with a marginal decrease of 1.6% to record 99.07 billion USD, including 44.32 billion USD of imports and 54.75 billion USD of exports.
Moreover, the structure of exports remains dominated by hydrocarbons with a rate of 90.74%. Non-hydrocarbon exports recorded an amount of 5.07 billion USD.
Regarding Algeria’s most important trading partners, they came respectively to the European Union with 56.9%, China with about 11%, then Turkey with 6%.
For its part, and in a remarkable development in trade relations between the two countries, the United States of America came as the fifth largest customer of Algerian exports with 5.43%, equivalent to about 2.7 billion dollars, behind, respectively, Italy with 28.71%, France with 13.27%, Spain with 9.23% and Turkey 6.15%.