According to the Ministry of Finance, transfers to EDL rose substantially to stand at LBP 545.66B ($361.96M), compared to LBP 316.89B ($210.21M)
This rise mainly resulted from the increase in payments to fuel and oil gas suppliers KPC and Sonatrach, which reached $357.31M by April 2017. In fact, the volumes of imported fuel dropped by a yearly 0.07%, while that of gas oils increased by 8.73% y-o-y. The overall yearly payments reflected the rising global oil prices, noting that the average price of crude oil rose by 48.24% y-o-y to $53.2/barrel by April 2017.
Furthermore, EDL’s contribution to the oil bill decreased to 2.8% in the first 4 months of 2017, down from its previous share of 9.5% in same period of 2016.
Out of the government’s primary expenditures, which reached $3.06B in the period Jan-Apr 2017, EDL transfers represented a share of 11.8% of the total compared to a share of 6% by April 2016.
Contribution of EDL in the Total Oil Bill by April
Source: MoF