Public Finance Accounting in an Oil-Dependent Economy: An Analysis of the Structure of Government Revenue and Expenditure in Libya for Fiscal Year 2024

Abstract

This paper examines the accounting structure of Libya's public finances for the fiscal year 2024, drawing on the statistical tables published by the Central Bank of Libya in its Sixty-Eighth Annual Report. Applying vertical and horizontal analysis to the recorded uses and sources of public funds, the study finds that total spending recorded by the Government of National Unity reached LYD 123.2 billion, of which wages and quasi-wage payments ("Chapter One") absorbed 57 percent, development spending 22 percent, subsidies 13 percent, and operating expenses 8 percent, confirming the continued dominance of consumption-type expenditure over investment-type expenditure. On the resource side, total public revenue reached LYD 123.5 billion, of which oil revenue contributed 72.7 percent, non-oil sovereign revenue (taxes, customs, and telecommunications fees) contributed only 3.4 percent, and two exceptional, non-recurring sources — fees levied on foreign-currency sales (18.2 percent) and a profit transfer from the Central Bank of Libya (5.7 percent) — together financed almost one quarter of total public spending. The paper further documents a parallel, off-budget financing channel in the form of a Government of Libya expenditure track and an oil-for-fuel-products swap arrangement, together adding an estimated LYD 101 billion in economic activity outside the reported LYD 123.2 billion budget figure. These findings are interpreted through the lens of public-sector and resource-curse accounting literature, and the paper argues that the observed reliance on exceptional, non-recurring revenue instruments and on parallel expenditure tracks raises significant fiscal-transparency and government-accounting concerns that migration toward an internationally recognized government finance statistics framework could help to address.