The Tunisian Institute of Statistics revealed that the Tunisian economy achieved a growth of 3.1 percent in 2021, supported by the fast-growing mining and natural gas sectors, after contracting 8.7 percent in 2020. The economy grew 1.6 percent during the fourth quarter of 2021, while the mining sector grew by 78 percent, while the natural gas sector grew by 20 percent.
The Tunisian economy has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, after years of stagnation exacerbated by political turmoil. Because of the economic downturn and the weakness of Tunisia's self-finance resources, the inflation rate rose during the month of January to the level of 6.7 percent, thus continuing the rise in the level of domestic inflation for the fourth consecutive month.
The Tunisian government expects to record an economic growth of 2.6 percent this year, the general budget relied on an average price of a barrel of oil in the range of $75, a price much exceeded by events, which will have a negative impact on the financing of the budget and the additional financing expenditures it will require. Tunisia launched new technical negotiations with the IMF in mid-May 2021 with the aim of obtaining a new loan of about $4 billion. However, the lack of clarity in the political situation, the suspension of Parliament activities, and the dissolution of the government of Hisham al-Mashishi, which was managing the negotiations in their early stages, led to the freezing of the entire negotiation process before it resumed last February, in light of the IMF offering a package of conditions to Tunisia to carry out deep economic reforms.
Source (Al-Sharq al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
