According to what was reported by the Tunis News Agency, the Minister said during a joint plenary session of the Assembly of People’s Representatives and the National Council of Regions and Regions, on the draft Finance Law for the year 2025, that “the debt… Tunisia It will continue its downward trend from 23.82 percent of the gross domestic product in 2024 to 80.46 percent in 2025 and 76.39 percent in 2027.”
The Minister of Finance said that in order to reduce the debt, the government will work in accordance with the directions of the draft Finance Law 2025, by “improving the initial result of the budget, controlling the interest cost of the public debt, and gradually reducing the budget deficit from 6.3 percent of the gross domestic product in 2024 to 5.5 percent in the year.” 2025″.
She added that the government also aims to reduce the budget deficit to 4.7 percent in 2026 and then 3.6 percent in 2027, explaining that achieving these levels requires achieving some indicators, including a growth rate in the range of 3.2 percent in 2025, maintaining the stability of the value of the dinar, and moving towards relying on borrowing. Internal and reducing the size of external debt to avoid the impact of exchange rates.
She indicated that all of these factors will contribute to reducing financing needs from 17.1 percent of the gross domestic product in 2024 to 15.4 percent in 2025, to 12 percent in 2026, and then by 10 percent in 2027.
The minister said that Tunisia was able during the current year to pay a debt service estimated at about 25 billion dinars, adding that 24.7 billion dinars are expected to be paid during the coming year.
The minister said that despite the improvement in indicators, the public finance situation is still experiencing difficulties, and the budget disposal margin is still weak, especially in light of the high public debt service.
In response to the criticism of MPs who described the successive budgets in recent years as tax budgets, Finance Minister Siham Al-Boughdiri Namsia said that the state is currently working to mobilize non-fiscal resources, adding that the financial harvests during the coming year will be different and the results will be the best evidence, she said.
State budget deficit
The Tunisian budget deficit recorded record levels of 9.4 percent in 2020 before falling to 7.6 percent in 2021, then rising to 7.9 percent in 2022, as a result of Tunisia’s exposure, since 2020, to unprecedented global crises, including the “Covid-19” health pandemic. “To the Russian-Ukrainian war, according to what Minister Siham Al-Boughdiri said.
She explained that the state’s budget resources declined by more than 7 billion dinars in 2020, especially as a result of quarantine measures.
She stressed that the Russian-Ukrainian war had a significant impact on support expenditures, with the value of these impacts reaching 12 billion dinars, noting that these repercussions continue until now, which required the mobilization of exceptional fiscal and non-fiscal resources for the state, which amounted to approximately 21 billion dinars in 2020, 20 billion dinars in 2021, and 26 billion dinars. Dinar in 2022.
Economic policies
The Minister indicated that the policies adopted by governments during the previous decade led to a deterioration in public debt service from 14.8 billion dinars in 2021 to 25 billion dinars in 2024.
She confirmed that the increase in public debt from 2021 to 2024 is mainly due to the repercussions of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the repercussions of the pandemic, and the effect of the exchange rate, because a 1 percent increase in the exchange rate results in an increase in the size of the debt by about 640 million dinars.
