The International Monetary Fund has forecast Tunisia's GDP growth of 3.8 percent this year, compared to a record contraction of 8.2 percent in 2020.
The IMF urged Tunisia to control the mass of wages, energy subsidies and transfers to public companies, warning that the budget deficit could rise to more than 9 percent of GDP, in the absence of these measures.
Tunisia's public finances are in a very difficult situation, with the fiscal deficit reaching 11.5 percent of GDP in 2020, the highest in nearly four decades.
The 2021 budget aims to reduce the fiscal deficit to 6.6 percent, but according to the International Monetary Fund, specific measures are needed to support this goal.
The wage bill in Tunisia doubled to about 20 billion dinars (7.45 billion dollars) in 2021 from 7.6 billion in 2010, and support expenditures reached 3.4 billion dinars, including 2.4 billion dinars for food subsidies, 401 million dinars for fuel subsidies, and 600 million dinars to support Transport, according to the 2021 budget.
In December, the Tunisian Central Bank agreed to buy treasury bonds worth $2.8 billion to finance the record fiscal deficit in the 2020 budget after weeks of wrangling with the government.
Source (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed Newspaper, Edited)
