Algeria Freezes “Tourist Allowances”: When the Military Regime’s Economic Collapse Catches Up with Tebboune’s Propaganda
The Algerian military regime is once again attempting to mask its economic collapse. Behind the contradictory statements of Interior Minister Saïd Sayoud regarding the €750 “tourist allowance” lies a much harsher reality: the Algerian state simply no longer has the means to fund this promise, which has become an unbearable burden on rapidly depleting foreign currency reserves.
Let’s be clear: the Algerian tourist allowance is neither genuine aid nor a true public policy. It is merely a tightly controlled foreign exchange authorization, heavily monitored and conditioned, now stripped of substance by a series of restrictions that reveal the panic of a regime running short on foreign currency.
A State Lie to Mask Financial Asphyxiation
When Saïd Sayoud insists that “there will be no rollback” on President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s decision, he conveniently omits that the allowance is, in practice, frozen—made inaccessible by coercive bureaucracy and deterrent controls. Mandatory bank cards, full traceability, beneficiary filtering, suspension of land transfers: everything is designed to slow, reduce, or even block actual access to foreign currency.
Why? Because Algeria no longer produces wealth outside hydrocarbons, because its economy is trapped in an archaic rentier model, and above all because foreign currency reserves are dangerously eroding, exposing the structural failure of a regime incapable of reform.
The “Fake Travelers” Scandal: Symptom of a Rotten System
The uncovering of networks exploiting nearly 100,000 unemployed people to claim this presidential allowance is no anomaly—it is the natural outcome of a locked, corrupt, and hopeless system. When Algerians are bused to Tunisia merely to get their passports stamped before returning clandestinely, it is not a clever scheme—it is a cry of social distress.
The suspicious movement of 5,000 buses in two months, during the low tourist season, illustrates the scale of despair and the utter failure of employment policies. A state that turns its unemployed into extras in a massive fraud is not a victim of abuse: it is complicit in its own decay.
The Bank of Algeria: Firefighter of an Uncontrollable Blaze
By demanding the end of cash payments and the obligation to hold a bank account, the Bank of Algeria is not fighting fraud—it is trying to contain the hemorrhage of foreign currency. This outflow is not caused by citizens but by decades of poor governance, clientelism, and the militarization of the economy.
Suspending buses, requiring special licenses, pointing fingers at “brokers”: all cosmetic measures that carefully avoid asking the only real question—where has the country’s wealth gone?
A Regime That Confiscates Dignity After Stealing the Future
Presented as a right meant to allow Algerian families to travel “with dignity,” the tourist allowance has become an instrument of control and humiliation, revealing the vast gap between official rhetoric and lived reality.
In truth, the Algerian military regime is not merely freezing “an allowance”: it is freezing the aspirations, mobility, and hope of a sacrificed youth. And as long as the state prefers propaganda over reform, surveillance over trust, and lies over economic truth, no allowance—even a presidential one—can hide the collapse of a system running out of breath.
Translated from Abderrazzak Boussaid’s French article – le7tv
