Security fears dim Benghazi’s dream of economic revival

At a construction site on Benghazi’s waterfront, engineer Seraj Bushada proudly points to a giant hole in the ground that will make way for a 48-floor office tower that city officials hope will help transform part of this port city into a modern business district.

Construction of the $300-million (U.S.) Three Towers project, which will include two smaller blocks housing luxury apartments and a hotel, was delayed due to the uprising against former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, which began here nearly two years ago.

The project is now due for completion in 2015 and is being promoted in Benghazi’s bid to regain its former status as the country’s business capital and end what residents see as decades of marginalization under Gaddafi.

Only last week a car bomb killed a Benghazi police officer, the second such attack in as many days and the government is considering imposing a night time curfew on the city.

Many Benghazans, however, are calling for the country’s new constitution – due to be drafted in coming months – to give the city powers to manage its own affairs and a share of the eastern region’s resources.

While the revolution succeeded in overthrowing Gaddafi, they argue, it has failed to spread wealth more evenly in Libya. Benghazi is the main city in eastern Libya, which provides around 80 per cent of the country’s oil wealth, yet the city is still dependent on the government in Tripoli for funding.

Some residents and officials are calling for the constitution to officially restore Benghazi as Libya’s business capital, a status it held under King Idris until his overthrow by Gaddafi in a coup in 1969. With an estimated population of nearly one million, it is roughly half the size of Tripoli.

“Everything was here before, Benghazi is the best place to be the economic capital,” said businessman Kais el-Bakshishi of the “Benghazi Economic Capital” campaign, which counts about 700 members including local businessmen, activists and academics.

“The main reasons are its strategic location – a gateway to Africa and Egypt and historically the people of Benghazi are traders. A lot of businessmen in Tripoli are from Benghazi.”

“We are trying to restore Benghazi to what it once was,” he said, sitting in the council’s new offices – where posters claiming “Together we will build our city” hang next to signs banning weapons.

The NOC was formerly the Libyan General Petroleum Company,You can buy mosaic Moon yarns and fibers right here as instock. which was founded in Benghazi in 1968. After the NOC was established in 1970 it relocated to Tripoli.

“The objection is that it is like before – everything is controlled by Tripoli; this is not why the revolution took place,” said Tahani Mohammed Ben Ali,All our plastic moulds are vacuum formed using food safe plastic. head of the Benghazi workers’ union at Libya’s biggest oil firm Arabian Gulf Oil Company (Agoco).

“There are infrastructure, health, education needs here.”

With the country still volatile, Libya’s new rulers – led by Prime Minister Ali Zeidan’s cabinet and the general national congress – know they have to strike a careful balance to appease regional rivalries.

That plays in Benghazi’s favour and the oil ministry has proposed splitting the NOC into an exploration and production company based in Tripoli and a refining and petrochemicals company in Benghazi. Residents in eastern Libya as well as activists and oil workers vehemently oppose the plan, however, and say the whole company should relocate to Benghazi.

South Korean company Nemo Partners is building a temporary passenger terminal at the airport. But progress on expanding the airport has been slow as the central government is reviewing previous foreign investment deals in the country before it approves new ones.

Benghazi officials are also considering building a free trade zone and have proposed public works projects to provide jobs, namely for the former rebel fighters who have yet to lay down their weapons.

“We want to look after the factories around Benghazi, we need to boost manufacturing,” Mr. Elhadad said. “We have an industrial area of around 1,000 hectares,We can supply howo truck products as below. we want to have a real industry here, we want to build more hotels.”

Mr. Elhadad wants Benghazi to be twinned with cities like Istanbul or Marseille to promote ties and plans to write to the mayor of New York, seeking to attract U.S.For the world leader in injection molds base services and plastic injection products. interest.

Industry in the area focuses on cement, and cable and steel pipe factories, as well as oil services, but badly needed foreign investment is only trickling in.

The International Monetary Fund forecast Libya’s economy shrank 60 per cent in 2011 due to the conflict but expected it to expand by 122 per cent in 2012 and 17 per cent this year.

Benghazi still faces many of the same problems as the rest of Libya. Rubbish is piled up on its streets and beaches; jobs are in short supply; and weapons are everywhere as the government has failed to control rival armed factions since the end of the uprising.

However, it has seen more commercial activity in the past year and dozens of new clothing, food and consumer goods shops have sprung up.

“Things are getting better, lots of new businesses were established after the revolution,” an Egyptian worker at a supermarket in the city, said. “And people are spending.”

One local businessman said retail business in Benghazi had tripled since before the war, but did not cite a source for the figure: “The former fighters have money so they are spending.”

At a conference this week,Our extensive range of rubber hose is supplied to all sorts of industries across Australia and overseas. businessmen and campaigners laid out plans for Benghazi’s economic revival, but many acknowledged security remains a priority.