Libya, whose leader Muammar Gaddafi last week berated his fellow countrymen for their over-reliance on oil, plans to set up a huge free trade zone to boost its industry and trade, the government said on Monday.
The cabinet, in a statement carried by the official news agency Jana, said the zone will be between the Mediterrananean coastal towns of Zuwarah and Bukamash, east of the capital Tripoli.
"The zone aims at creating real estate development, touristic, manufacturing, trade and various other investment projects," the statement said, quoting from a cabinet executive order on the free zone creation. Gaddafi's son, al Saadi Gaddafi whom government insiders say is "the brain behind the idea of creating the zone", told reporters on Monday:
The government said on Monday it had set up an investment scheme, officially called the Social and Economic Development Fund, with a capital of $6.5 billion to help the relatively poor to move up the social scale. It will invest $2.5 billion of its capital in various businesses ranging from services to manufacturing activities this year, the cabinet added in a separate statement. The government said the profits of the invested money, estimated at $600 million per year, will be targetted on relatively poor people.
It did not say whether the investment will be made on foreign markets or at home, where the small market is unlikely to absorb such assets to return profits in a short period of time.
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