EVERY 15 seconds out pops a washing machine, a television and an air-conditioner from the modern production lines in Setif, 270km (170 miles) east of Algiers. Some 90% of them are destined for export. Algeria offers cheap labour, proximity to Europe and has been calm for a decade. Production costs are a seventh as high as in France, says a manager at the Algerian company, Cevital, which recently acquired Bradt, a French manufacturer of domestic appliances. A new 100-hectare site is set to open across town early next year.

Historically Setif has been a turbulent city. A massacre of demonstrators there triggered the guerrilla war that forced out the French colonists in 1962. In the 1990s jihadists waged a decade-long revolt, taking refuge in the mountains near the town. Only last month the security forces fired rubber bullets at retired army officers demanding higher pensions.

So the government should welcome fresh investment and jobs. But local entrepreneurs complain that officials obstruct them. Authorisations which once took a month now drag on for three. On the coast at Bejaia, the government has barred delivery of equipment for Cevital’s new line in animal fodder, next to its huge cooking-oil plant. Ministers still mouth calls for diversification (away from oil) and private investment, but many bigwigs seem nervous of undermining the government’s business empire. “We should beware of licensing monopolies,” says Djamel Ould Abbas, the 83-year-old secretary-general of the National Liberation Front (FLN), which has ruled Algeria since independence.

Monopolies, for Mr Abbas, remain a prerogative of the state. His worldview has resisted evolution since the anti-colonial struggle he helped wage in the 1960s. “We’re the only Muslim and Arab country that has remained faithful to its sociopolitical ideals of solidarity with the poor and marginalised,” he says. By his reckoning, there is much to chirp about. Algeria does better than any other African country on the UN’s “human development” index. The poor live in free, if grim, housing estates. Desalination plants have ended water shortages. A modern subway speeds through the capital. Toll-free highways criss-cross the country. The first Arab state to succumb to a jihadist uprising was also the first to emerge. Some 200,000 people were killed in its “dark decade” in the 1990s, but today it is one of the Arab world’s most tranquil states. The last big attack in the capital was almost ten years ago. The Arab spring of 2011 passed it by. Young would-be haraga, migrants considering an illegal dinghy-ride across the Mediterranean, say terrorism in London and Paris is a deterrent.

But the elderly founding fathers seem ever more out of touch. In elections in May, only 28% (according to the government’s massaged figures) turned out to vote. A quarter of the ballot papers were spoiled. The president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, is 80 years old and confined to a wheelchair. In May he needed help casting his ballot. He has not given a speech in public for years. Critics call him “the living dead”.

Petrodollars and the fear of a knock on the door still buy quiescence. But welfare, red-tape and drugs have sapped the nation’s vitality. Goods that Algeria once produced in abundance, such as wheat, are now imported. Bread, petrol and milk are subsidised. Food and transport for students, as well as education, are free. But the government can no longer balance the books. Since oil prices collapsed in 2014, it has burned through 90% of its oil stabilisation fund. It has spent almost half of its foreign reserves, and the rest could run out in two years. The budget deficit hit 17% of GDP last year. Having relied on oil and gas rents for decades, the government’s kneejerk response is to increase production.