Tunisia's Parliament has approved with 110 votes in favor, 21 against, and two abstentions, the 2021 budget law with a deficit forecast at 8 billion dinars, or 2.5 billion euros, over 7% of GDP. State expenditure, according to the official page of Parliament, will total 41 billion dinars while revenues should reach 33 billion dinars.
Calculated on a price of oil at 45 dollars per barrel, the budget law sets a growth target of 4% in 2021, after a historic drop of GDP of 7% forecast in 2020 due to the crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Debate on the draft legislation began at the end of November and was marked by strong political tension with at times clashes recorded between bickering parties. According to the new measures, corporate taxes will go from 15% for those who had to pay 25%. Moreover, deductions on capital gains on the sale of stocks and bonds were cut from 25% to 15%.
Deductions on payments, commissions, intermediation, rentals, and revenues from noncommercial activities as well as payments in exchange for services dropped from 15% to 10%.
These dispositions will concern revenues made from January 1, 2021, and declared in 2022 and over the subsequent years.
Withholding taxes will occur as of January 1, 2021. The State budget for 2021 does not provide for hires in the public sector with the exception of healthcare and the security sector.
The Tunisian Central Bank (BCT) has criticized a deficit that was deemed excessive in 2020 (14% of GDP) and excessive internal financing in the supplementary budget. The four-year financing plan of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ended in the spring without defining a certain strategy of collaboration for the future and an IMF delegation is about to arrive in Tunis, the Tunisian economy minister said recently.
Tunisia over the past few years has relied heavily on international donors. During the presentation of the draft budget in Parliament on November 28, the head of government Hichem Mechichi said the text presents ''a quantified framework'' of the ''infructuous'' political consequences stemming from several years of economic, social, and political instability. From the revolution in 2011, nine governments have taken office, preventing the adoption of fundamental reforms to relaunch an economy in difficulty.
