Algerian government drafts new employment strategy

[Al-khiyal]

Commune de Hassi Mameche dans la wilaya de Mostaganem :
Portes ouvertes sur les dispositifs d’emploi

Jeudi 31 Mars 2011 -- Une manifestation portes ouvertes sur les différents dispositifs d’emploi et d’insertion offerts par l’Etat au profit des jeunes chômeurs s’est ouverte mardi dernier à Hassi Mameche, dans la wilaya de Mostaganem. Cette manifestation, organisée par l’Office des établissements de jeunes (ODEJ) et la Direction de la jeunesse et des sports (DJS), en collaboration avec les banques publiques et les dispositifs d’emploi (Ansej, Angem, Cnac), est une occasion pour faire connaître les procédures de financement et de soutien aux microprojets et les nouvelles mesures incitatives accordées par l’Etat permettant aux jeunes de concrétiser leurs projets. Cette initiative permet également d’expliquer aux jeunes les modalités permettant d’avoir accès aux crédits.

De nombreux jeunes, qui ont déposé récemment leurs dossiers auprès de différents dispositifs de soutien à l’emploi, ont appelé, lors d’une rencontre avec des représentants de banques publiques, à accélérer le traitement des dossiers en réduisant la durée des études de fiabilité des projets. Ils ont fait remarquer, dans ce sens, que le délai de réception de l’aval de financement dépasse les six mois. Pour leur part, les représentants des institutions bancaires participant à cette rencontre ont indiqué que ce retard dans l’approbation du crédit est justifié par le manque d’encadrement humain chargé d’examiner les dossiers, devant le volume de demandes.

Il est à noter que ces rencontres ciblant 35 entreprises de jeunes dans la wilaya permettront notamment aux porteurs de projets de s’informer davantage des procédures pour bénéficier de crédits et divers avantages financiers et fiscaux offerts par les dispositifs de soutien à l’emploi. L’accent est également mis sur l’importance de l’orientation au cours de la phase de formation. Selon les organisateurs de ces portes ouvertes, les points d’information et les cellules d’écoute implantés au niveau des établissements juvéniles enregistrent un grand nombre de jeunes venant s’informer sur les modalités de formation, d’apprentissage, de création de microentreprises et des modalités de financement des projets.

[Al-khiyal]

Algeria boosts social programmes

April 14, 2011 -- Starting in July, the monthly allowance for Algerians enrolled in the public works programme (IAIG) will double to 6,000 dinars, APS reported on Wednesday (April 13th). As part of the new social package, authorities will also offer part-time employment to programme participants, Social Development Agency chief Mohamed Fouad Rachedi said. In addition, authorities will raise the age limit for inclusion into social employment programmes for the long-term jobless from 40 to 59 years.

[Al-khiyal]

Algeria’s job generation challenge

Lotfi, a mild-mannered young man from a working-class Algiers neighbourhood, earns a little from driving and other odd jobs that he hears about through his network of male friends – always an important resource for north Africa’s unemployed. Algerians, he says, “just want to work with dignity, have their rights, be able to set up a home. That’s all.” Would he himself ever take to the streets in protest? “Of course,” he replies. “We are sick of this regime.” Three days of rioting in the capital and other towns in January may have been driven by economic grievances, but they also saw a surfacing of resentment against an authoritarian state. Since the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, the Algerian government is well aware of how parallel currents of discontent can converge. It responded with steps to ease economic pressures, and promises of political reform.

Unemployment among young people in the towns remains an intractable problem for which even the political opposition has no easy answers. It affects both men and women: Dalila Touat, a 35-year-old physics graduate, unemployed since leaving college, became a cause célèbre in March after being threatened with a prison sentence for distributing leaflets urging action on jobs. She was acquitted by a court in the western port city of Mostaganem on April 28. Joblessness overall in Algeria fell from 15 per cent in 2005 to 10 per cent in 2009 (the latest date for which figures are available), according to Algerian government and International Monetary Fund estimates. But among under-24-year-olds in the towns it eased only to 25 per cent.

Successive impressively named “plans” for economic reform have been unveiled since Abdelaziz Bouteflika became president in 1999, but the challenge facing the government increasingly starkly is to generate jobs. Algeria derives about 67 per cent of its tax receipts from oil and natural gas production – industries that employ only about one in 100. The problem is compounded, say some analysts, by an official mindset. “Successive Algerian governments have talked about encouraging small and medium businesses to create jobs, but have largely failed to do so,” says Jon Marks, chairman of consultancy Cross-border Information.

The government responded to January’s riots by expanding a scheme that offers business start-up loans for the unemployed. It also introduced some hefty public-sector wage increases, hoping for a trickle-down effect through consumer spending, and lowered import tariffs on oil and sugar, after price rises were said to have triggered the riots. Ironically, it was perhaps a reforming move that prompted those price rises. Issad Rebrab, chief executive of Cevital, a food-processing group, blames wholesalers who, he says, had moved to increase margins ahead of a new regulation preventing them from making large payments in cash, favoured to avoid tax.

Foreign investors, looking at a potentially attractive market of more than 35 million people, face a business environment where policy changes can be abrupt. The introduction in 2009 of a law obliging any new foreign investor to find a 51 per cent local partner is often cited, as is the experience of Egypt’s Orascom, which invested in cement and telecoms, only to find it had offended certain decision-makers. The company is still in a standoff with the Algerian authorities over a $230 million tax demand at its Djezzy mobile phone operator. Partnerships with foreign companies will nevertheless be important for jobs, says Jean-Marie Pinel, chairman of the Algerian-French Chamber of Commerce. Oil revenues have produced a certain level of spending power, and labour is priced accordingly, so Algeria is not well positioned to develop as a low-cost production base, he says. Algerian officials are in talks with Renault over a possible car assembly plant, a first for Algeria. Mostaganem is at present the favoured site for the plant, which may produce 100,000 units a year, says Hamoud Benhamdine, who heads the ministry’s investment department. Renault has yet to make a final decision. As the highways and other infrastructure that such investors need have been built under Mr Bouteflika, contracts have gone to Chinese companies which bring in their own labour.

Last year, Mr Bouteflika announced Algeria’s five-year plan for 2010-14, which included $156 billion of spending on new projects. The president claimed the spending would generate 3 million jobs as well as 2 million housing units. But progress in skilling up local workers has been limited. Nassera Merah, a democracy campaigner and architect, rebuts the suggestion that young Algerians are not willing to take manual jobs. “That is absolute rubbish,” she says. “In my experience on site, Algerian companies are just as capable as Chinese companies, and people living in working class areas are very keen to work.”