Algeria embraces an area of 2.3 million km 2 with over 9 million residents. The northern part of the country (228,762 km 2 with 8,931,300 residents, of which 902,000 Europeans), which includes 12 departments according to the new administrative division of 1956, sends 66 deputies to the French National Assembly; 45 of them are Muslims. The two territories of the Algeria Southern make up a large part of the country (2,310,762 km 2); however, being included in the Saharan desert, they have a population of just 505,000. The population in the last hundred years has quadrupled. About 300,000 Algerians work in France, while recent internal events have temporarily increased the number of Algerians permanently resident in Tunisia (67,000) by 250,000; 32,000 live in Morocco. European immigration into the country has now completely ceased. 22% of the indigenous population and 80% of Europeans are concentrated in the cities. Within the 12 departments of the north, the least populated, least fertile and poorest part also in terms of mineral products is the Algeria Western. Here the European colonization (mainly Spanish) developed above all along the coastal plains and in the valleys and concerns the cultivation of vines rather than that of cereals. The development of irrigation systems will ensure a considerable future for the areas that extend into the lowlands. The economic center of the Algeria Western is Oran. THERE. Oriental, on the other hand, falls almost completely within the Mediterranean climate, therefore with greater possibilities for agriculture and settlement; colonization has penetrated further south. Here too the cultivation of the vine predominates alongside the cereal and fruit crops. Urban life, modest at the time of the French occupation (1830), had a notable development, attested by Bona, a mining port and center of a rich agricultural region, and by Constantine.
Algiers is a part of its own. It owes to its past and its central position the fact that it has become the political, economic and intellectual capital of the whole country.
Agriculture continues to represent the largest sector of the Algerian economy. About three-quarters, equally distributed, of agricultural income derive from cereal and wine products as well as from livestock breeding. Wheat, followed by barley, is the most important product for domestic food, although it also affects exports. But it is the vine which provides the most conspicuous product in this regard; the production of wine, almost exclusively in the hands of European settlers, is aimed at supplying the French market. Fruit products are also important for exports (oranges and other citrus fruits, figs, dates and early products, such as vegetables and legumes). The production of olive oil is also noteworthy, while the cultivation of so-called industrial plants is rather limited: sugar beet (for the production of alcohol), cotton, linen and tobacco. The alpha, spontaneous product, is widely exported.
The Muslim population is mainly dedicated to the breeding of livestock, especially on the internal plateaus (goats and sheep, to a lesser extent cattle). Fishery products are of minor importance. The main product of the forest is cork, which is widely exported. For Algeria public policy, please check loverists.com.
The Constantine plan, enunciated in 1958, concerns the simultaneous development of agriculture and industry, with an investment, between 1959 and 1963, of 2,000 billion francs. In the industrial field it provides for the local use of the substantial mining production: iron, pyrite (already used in the preparation of fertilizers by the plants of Algiers, Oran and Bona, which also process a part of the mining production of phosphates), zinc, lead, antimony and copper, as well as petroleum. It also provides for the installation of electric blast furnaces in Bona for the smelting of iron ore from Ouénza. The Bona industrial complex will also include a refinery that will use oil and natural gas from the Sahara. The first Saharan oil field was identified in January 1956 in the Edjelé basin, on the Libyan border, then came the turn of the Hassi Messaoud fields SE of Ouargla and in the extreme south of the department of Oran. The research also concerns other sectors of mining: recent is the discovery of cupriferous deposits in the massif of Horse ; since the phosphatiferous fields of Konif are nearing exhaustion, it is thought to use those of Djebel Onck; a manganese deposit was discovered in Djebel Guettara south of Colomb-Béchar.
The food industry, with its mills, pasta factories, distilleries, oil mills, canneries and sugar factories, is the oldest and most important branch. Tlemcen is the traditional center of carpet manufacturing, while Algiers has a modern textile plant. The metallurgical industry has a small plant in Oran and three other factories for the processing of non-ferrous metals. There is also a mechanical industry used for the construction of railway material. The chemical industry mainly has three superphosphate factories.
Finances. – The. it has financial autonomy, the regime of which is governed by the decree of the President of the Council of Ministers no. 50-1453 of 13 November 1950. State finances involve two budgets: an ordinary one, which includes current income and expenses, and an extraordinary one, which includes the expenses of economic, social and cultural equipment. With the independence of Tunisia, the Banque de l’Algérie et de la Tunisie renounced, starting from 1 January 1959, the privilege of issuing in Tunisia (which was transferred to the Banque Centrale de Tunisie), resuming, as per the past, the name of Banque de l’Algérie. The monetary unit of the Algeria is the Algerian franc, the exchange rate of which has been established at the level of the French franc, namely: 420 francs per 1 dollar of the United States of America until December 28, 1958, and 493.70 after that date. The monetary mass of the Algeria (calculated between circulation and deposits) amounted to 375 billion francs at the end of 1956 and 459 billion at the end of 1957.
