Yes, Libya has no bananas...

Press, 17 January 1986, Page 14

Yes, Libya has no bananas...

By JUDITH MILLER, of the A banana boat from Nicaragua steamed into Tripoli last week—and that is when the trouble started. Several people were injured in the riots that broke out at fruit and vegetable stores throughout the city, diplomats said, as people fought for the prized imported fruit.There were similar riots two months ago, the envoys said, when two women were killed and several people hurt when another banana boat arrived from Nicaragua. Libya is pumping about 990,000 barrels of oil a day but it has no bananas, nor much meat, nor toilet paper, nor matches, nor detergent, nor soap. Fresh vegetables are also in short ( supply, as are many other products. The Suk el-Magamah, one of six giant Government food and department stores in Tripoli, has had almost no fresh produce or meat of any kind for weeks, residents say. Only three years ago the Libyan

“New York Times,” in Tripoli leader, Colonel Gadaffi, opened the plush department store where shelves were piled high with subsidised consumer goods from all over the world. As part of the gala ceremony, reporters and the colonel’s honoured guest, Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, were treated to tea in the store’s canteen, while the China, tomato paste from Greece, canned tomatoes from Cyprus, salt, damaged cans of vegetable fat, and insect spray. The display windows of the adjoining department store were cracked and dusty, the shelves empty. Only two items were wellstocked. The top floor of the store was full of stuffed pot-bellied teddy bears, which Russian customers eagerly snapped up. Two floors below, the shoe department boasted 20 pairs of men’s tennis shoes, all size 45, bearing in English the word “jamahiriya.” The word is the colonel’s name in Arabic for Libya, which is

roughly translated as “gathering of the masses.” Both .the teddy bears and tennis shoes were made in South Korea. In an interview on January 16, the colonel said the shortages in goods were sometimes intentional “to force people to work harder and produce them.” But most diplomats and economists attribute the chronic shortages to the dramatic plunge in oil revenue, Libya’s only major source of income. They said the country’s annual oil income had fallen from a peak of SUS 22 billion in 1980 to about ?US9 billion in 1985. As the country has only slightly more than three million people, it is still relatively prosperous, especially since just 30 years ago it had one of the world’s lowest per capita incomes, and its only source of hard currency was the sale of scrap metal from World War II battlefields. Families with incomes of less than SUSSOO a month still get free colonel praised the “people’s stores” as a symbol of his country’s prosperity.

The only food commodities in ample supply in the food section last week were 110-pound bags of Cuban sugar, boxes of tea from housing, schooling and medical treatment. But foreign economists say Libya’s problem involves the drop in its reserves of hard foreign currency. Western diplomats in Tripoli estimate the country’s currency reserves at no more than 3U52.7 billion, down from SUS 3.6 billion at the end of 1984. Because the Government has decided on JUS2.S billion as the minimum reserve currency, it has drastically slashed spending and imports, which totalled ?USS billion in 1985.

Western business executives in Tripoli say United States economic sanctions could hurt the Libyan economy, at least temporarily, because many critical functions in the oil sector are now being performed by Americans, American companies, or European subsidiaries of American companies. “The Americans are heavily involved in maintaining the production side of oil,” said one Western

businessman. “If maintenance falls, production falls, and that’s bad news for Libya.” The drop in foreign currency reserves has also prompted Libya to eject thousands of foreign workers, among them about 40,000 Tunisians. Their departure last August crippled much of the consumer sector of the economy. The Tunisians ran restaurants and hotels, and were Tripoli’s barbers and bread makers, as well as foreign embassy drivers and translators. The Libyan Government has tried to replace some of them with workers from Morocco, with which Tripoli has signed a unity agreement Tripoli’s luxurious Grand Hotel, for example, has hired 200 Moroccans to replace its Tunisian staff but over-all service has suffered badly. “The Tunisians were very resourceful and had been here for a long time,” one diplomat said. “It’s tough to replace them.” Not all Libyans feel the shortages. As in most countries, the elite does not have to endure the endless queues for food and goods that plague the average Libyan. In spite of Colonel Gadaffi’s insistence that class, race, and tribe distinctions have been eliminated in Libya, those who work closely with the colonel and the revolutionary committees, a special cadre of young workers who perform propaganda and intelligence functions for the revolution, benefit in kind.

At a luncheon given by a politically well-connected family last week, hearty portions of meat, vegetables, and fruit were served to the guests. The villa, in what was one of the American compounds in Tripoli before the revolution, was richly furnished in the finest Arabic style. The low-slung velvet sectional sofa was new, as were the velvet and brass dining room chairs, and the oriental carpet on the living room floor. The hostess was especially proud of a Crystal vase and glasses decorated with revolutionary slogans from the green books, the thrfee slender volumes in which the colonel outlines , his vision of an Islamic utopia. On her mantelpiece were four cherished items: An Arabic lantern, a brass statue of a camel, a gold-leaf Koran, and a framed picture of the colonel.