Tunisia’s tourism revenue plunged by 65% in 2020 compared to 2019, to around $746 million, official figures showed on Thursday, as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a severe blow to the country’s economy.
In 2020, the number of visitors fell by 78%, as western tourists deserted Tunisia’s hotels and resorts, a government official told Reuters.
Tunisia had received a record 9.5 million visitors in 2019.
The contraction of Tunisia’s economy is expected to be at least 7% in 2020 as a result of the loss of revenue from tourism, which accounts for about 8% of GDP and is a major source of foreign currency.
Central bank data showed that tourism revenues fell to 2 billion Tunisian dinars ($746 million), compared to 5.6 billion dinars the previous year.
Travel restrictions and the spread of the novel coronavirus around the world led most hotels in Tunisia to close and tens of thousands in the tourism sector lost their jobs, which prompted the government to announce facilities in loans to hotel owners.
In December, the World Bank expected a 9.2 percent contraction in 2020 and growth to temporarily accelerate to 5.8 percent in 2021 as the pandemic’s effects begin to abate.
However, “pre-existing structural weaknesses are expected to drag the Tunisian economy into a more subdued growth trajectory of around two percent by 2022,” according to the WB report, which further indicated the possibility of an increase in poverty and unemployment rates in 2021.
Travel restrictions and the spread of the novel coronavirus around the world led most hotels in Tunisia to close and tens of thousands in the tourism sector lost their jobs.
Meanwhile, official data showed on Wednesday that Tunisia’s inflation rate stabilized at 4.9 percent in December, unchanged from November.
Inflation had eased to 4.9 percent in November from 5.4 percent in October.
In its report, the WB provided several recommendations to save the Tunisian economy, including the restructuring of public finances by containing the size of the wage bill, shifting social assistance from subsidies to more targeted transfers and addressing fiscal risks from state-owned enterprises.
