The President of the Tunisian Union for Industry, Commerce & Handicrafts Samir Majoul, called on the Tunisian government to "activate the state of economic emergency in order to protect economic sovereignty and the immunity of the national economic fabric after the official authorities confirmed the registration of an unprecedented economic contraction in Tunisia during the second quarter of the current year. The decline exceeds 21 percent, with the number of unemployed increasing by about 100,000, bringing the unemployment rate to 18 percent of the total active population, after it had stabilized for years at around 15 percent.
Majoul stressed, "the need to work to provide new conditions for a start to revive the economy by expediting major economic reforms and taking all necessary measures to boost development in the regions and support all economic sectors, especially the fragile ones, in addition to continuing to approve charters for vital sectoral systems, reforming the exchange law and addressing the parallel economy, and the inclusion of what could be incorporated into the formal sector.”
The Tunisian economy had recorded its worst economic result since 1997, as the Tunisian Institute of Statistics (governmental) revealed that the rate of economic growth decreased by 21.6 percent by the end of the second quarter of 2020, as this contraction included most economic sectors except the agricultural sector.
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
