Badr Al-Din Al-Toumi, the Minister of Local Governance in Libya’s outgoing National Unity Government, participated in the third edition of the “Looking South” International Forum, held in the Italian city of Sorrento yesterday and today.
Al-Toumi urged European countries to provide funding for investment operations in the Southern Mediterranean, including infrastructure, transportation, education, and healthcare.
He also emphasized the need to enhance trade cooperation and leverage the Italian “Mati” initiative to halt migration flows from African countries, calling for the development of executable plans to ensure its objectives are met.
The Minister of Local Governance added that the “Looking South” initiative could be relied upon to connect the North with the South, stressing its role in bridging value chains and consequently achieving industrial integration and service integration, contributing to increasing local outputs for Mediterranean countries.
Al-Toumi stated that Libya has made progress in the decentralization project, as well as activating municipalities and empowering them to manage their various competencies and to collect and exploit their local financial resources, granting them a high degree of administrative and financial independence.
