For nearly two hours, the Head of State lined up statistics presented as irrefutable proof of the country’s recovery: controlled inflation, sustained growth, booming investment. An avalanche of figures, often unverifiable, sometimes contradictory, but always brandished as revealed truths, in what has become a classic exercise in economic propaganda.
Magic numbers to mask an economy on life support:
During his speech, the Algerian President was careful not to mention that international financial institutions regularly underline the structural fragility of the Algerian economy, its extreme dependence on hydrocarbons and the absence of deep reforms to the business climate.
Statements about the 19,000 projects registered by the Algerian Investment Promotion Agency in 2025, or about some 13,000 startups, a totally imaginary and fanciful figure, fall more under publicity stunts than under any tangible productive reality. How many projects are actually operational? How many sustainable jobs have been created? How much capital has effectively been mobilized outside the energy sector? So many questions carefully avoided in a speech where quantity replaces analysis and where display stands in for economic policy.
Hydrocarbons, rent and structural deadlock:
Behind the rhetoric of diversification lies a brutal reality: Algeria remains trapped in oil and gas rent. Even the cyclical decline in energy revenues linked to international markets is presented as the result of enlightened governance, when it barely conceals the absence of a competitive industrial base, the chronic weakness of non hydrocarbon exports and a heavy bureaucracy that discourages private investment.
The grand utopian mining and railway projects, such as Ghar Djebilet, are exalted as historic feats. But no serious answers are provided about their real profitability, their long term financing, or the risks of over indebtedness they pose for public finances. State voluntarism is celebrated, while transparency and economic efficiency remain glaringly absent.
Social policy: promises with no clear funding
On the social front, the presidential speech resorts to reassuring rhetoric: a preserved welfare state, protected purchasing power, announced wage increases. Here again, communication prevails over budgetary coherence. No precise details on funding mechanisms, no explanation of how these expenditures will be absorbed without worsening financial imbalances or fueling inflation already strongly felt by households.
In reality, the Algerian population continues to suffer from shortages, structural unemployment, loss of confidence and erosion of purchasing power. A reality that parliamentary applause can no longer conceal.
Foreign policy: ideological posturing and a headlong rush
On the international front, the speech follows the rigid continuity of Algerian doctrine: fixed positions, sovereignist slogans and the instrumentalization of regional causes. But behind this posture of firmness lies an increasingly isolated diplomacy, incapable of adapting to geopolitical realignments and new regional economic dynamics. The contrast is striking between the martial tone of the speech and the gradual weakening of the country’s real diplomatic weight.
A regime confident in its narrative, but bankrupt in results:
In the end, this speech illustrates less the vitality of a state than the nervousness of a regime trapped in self persuasion. Through absurd numbers and proclamations without follow through, Algerian power tries to ward off a stubborn reality: a moribund economy, dependent on rent, undermined by distrust and incapable, at this stage, of producing sustainable and inclusive development.
Between political bravado and economic falsehoods, the presidential speech above all reveals an impasse: that of a system that talks a lot, constantly promises, but fails to turn its slogans into real progress for the Algerian people.
Translated from Abderrazzak Boussaid’s French article – le7tv