Doing business in Libya

Libya is probably not the first place that most people think of when they think of doing business overseas. For many years Libya was cut off from the rest of the world and subject to embargo. That has changed, Libya has been welcomed back into world affairs and they are anxious to get involved. As part of this they are trying to increase their foreign trade and this has created a number of opportunities to do business in Libya.

Despite the massive challenges involved there are good reasons that you would want to do business in Libya. The main one of course is that the country is a major oil producer. This has made the country very wealthy and created a lot of opportunity for investment. There is a major need for improvements in the infrastructure in Libya and there are several major projects underway. There are also a lot of smaller projects that need to be done. After many years cut off from the rest of the world there is not a lot of competition in the country right now and that provides the opportunity to get in on the ground floor.

There are many challenges when it comes to doing business in Libya that you are going to have to deal with. One of the biggest is simply getting into the country. It can be a major challenge for citizens of a lot of countries to get the required visas to get in to Libya. Once you are in Libya there are going to be all kinds of regulatory hoops to jump through in order to get a business started. The government has set out on a course to make this easier but for now it has just made things more confusing since nobody really knows what the rules are.

Assuming you can get permission to do business in Libya you are still going to have to overcome a whole host of other problems. The poor infrastructure, the lack of a sophisticated banking system, and a lack of skilled employees are just the major ones. There is also a different culture and corruption amongst government officials. If you are going to do business in Libya it is going to take a major commitment.

It is widely recommended that if you want to do business in Libya that you work in partnership with a local. In a lot of cases this is going to be required to get permission to set up business in the first place. Even if it isn't required you are going to want to assistance of somebody who is familiar with how things are done in Libya. It is also recommended that when you first start doing business in Libya that you start with a small business. Over time you can build your business but you want to start small and establish yourself in the country before you start taking on major projects.