Tunisian minister in charge of major national projects Lobna Jribi has announced that authorities earmarked around $2.1 billion to boost the country’s economy after months of a semi-full shutdown of production and exporting.
The Tunisian government is preparing to present a national rescue plan to parliament to prepare the appropriate ground for a new development plan, extending over five years from 2021 to 2026.
It works to restore balance to public funds and overcome the expected negative growth rate at the end of 2020. The plan also aims to settle the declining state tax revenues and the budget deficit.
Relying on pushing domestic and foreign private investment as one of the most important engines of development, the plan backs the partnership between the public and private sectors in addition to speeding up the rate of achieving public projects stalled by administrative and real-estate reasons.
A number of challenges and a state of structural deficit has put a stoke in the wheel of the Tunisian economic performance.
The proportion of investment has also declined. After it was in the range of 25% of the total investment, it now represents no more than 18.5%, which reflected on the registered economic growth rate and affected the fiscal resources of the state.
A number of economists, such as Izz al-Din Saidan, Murad Bakhala and Jannat bin Abdullah, believe that among the most important proposed solutions for the return of wealth production in Tunisia comes the integration of the informal sector in the economic cycle after it has attracted more than 50 percent of economic activities.
They also believe in the need to cut red tape procedures inhibiting private and public investments.
Studies, whose results were published by the Ministry of Development, Investment and International Cooperation, confirmed the many negative effects that the coronavirus pandemic had on the Tunisian economy. The pandemic had affected at least 16 economic activities.
