Bernard Ginns: Can Libya’s oil revenues really help rebalance our books?

They were part of an international coalition, acting with the legal backing of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 which authorised “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians, the enforcement of a no-fly zone and a range of sanctions including the freezing of assets.

Since then, strikes from the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and Army Air Corps have damaged or destroyed some 1,000 former regime targets.

The MoD has put the cost of operations at around £260m, but unofficial estimates suggest the overall bill could be £1.75bn.

To some, that will be a price worth paying to remove a brutal tyrant like Gadaffi.

There are other benefits too, according to Lord Green, the Minister for Trade and Investment, who was in Yorkshire last Wednesday to promote the benefits of being in the export game.

He claims that exporters are by their nature more innovative, more efficient and more profitable. He was fresh back from a meeting with Libya’s National Transitional Council for preliminary talks on the role the UK can play in rebuilding Libya’s economy and infrastructure.

Lord Green, the former HSBC chairman, told me: “The atmosphere in Libya is very striking. This is a country coming out of a revolution. This is the new free Libya.

“People I met were extremely warm to Britain; very conscious that this is a historic moment for Libya, conscious also that the job isn’t yet finished, there’s still fighting going on, but determined to make a success of the new Libya in the 21st century. The opportunities are very significant as things settle down there.

“You have got a country which is intrinsically wealthy. Very high levels of oil and gas reserves. This is an enormously wealthy country in principle, with a relatively small population – 8 million – and therefore the ability over time to deliver itself a standard of living that the Middle East now enjoys for instance.

“I think there’s a huge tourist opportunity in times to come. It has a lovely coastline and lovely climate and remarkable historical heritage centres. This is a place which is going to be really interesting.”

Yes, but does he really think there are genuine opportunities in Libya for manufacturing or engineering companies from Wakefield or Cleckheaton?

“Yes I do,” he shot back. “Absolutely I do. If it’s the first time they have gone overseas they are going to need support and encouragement.

“That I think is the responsibility of UKTI and their bank, supported by Export Credit Guarantee Department, which now has a product range which is as broad as that of our international competitors. This is a collective effort. The opportunity is there.”

A cynic could put it another way: the economies of the rich developed nations are stalling so they enlist the support of the United Nations and use their still-dominant military might to smash up key infrastructure in Libya and force out a troublesome, non-compliant former ally.

That creates massive demand for new building projects, which provide timely boosters for ailing Western companies and their supply chains, which can be paid for with enormous revenues from Libya’s oil and gas reserves.

But that’s only the cynical view. Taken the other way, this drive to promote trade opportunities for Yorkshire SMEs in Libya is just one part of this brave coalition’s multi-faceted growth strategy.

n Few things are as irritating as loud-mouthed American tourists.

But when those tourists are insightful as the financial journalist Michael Lewis then you have to pay attention, even if some of their observations might be quite offensive to their subject matter.

The author of The Big Short headed to Europe in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis that rocked America in a quest to understand what was happening to basket-case economies like Iceland, Greece and Ireland and where the whole stinking eurozone mess leaves Germany, the economic heart of Europe.

In Boomerang, The Meltdown Tour, Mr Lewis describes how macho Icelanders swapped fishing for investment banking, he illustrates the cultural aversion to paying tax in Greece and he reveals how nearly everyone in Ireland became a property developer during the years of cheap foreign credit.

“By the time I arrived in Hamburg in the summer of 2011, the fate of the financial universe seemed to turn on which way the German people jumped,” he writes.

That remains the case as I write this column. It’s rare to find a book this masterful and current, with such sharp focus on themes that are still being played out.