Tunisian expert reveals reasons behind emergence of debt phenomenon

Tunisian economic expert Mohamed Al Sadik Jabnon said that the phenomenon of debt is considered one of the major challenges facing economic life in Tunisia during the current period, saying that the Tunisian citizens increasingly suffer from the notable decline of their salaries, increasing prices and the decline of local currency’s exchange rate.
He added that the Tunisian citizen aspires to improve his standard of living, while he does not find the salary qualifying him for doing so. He blamed the governmental failure to achieve notable progress in the economic situation in the country, saying that most of debts are consuming.
He added that Tunisia can repay 53% of its external debt, equivalent to 3800 million dinars if the government stopped importing from Turkey.
He told “Arab Today” that, Tunisia exports from Turkey reached 1838 million dinars in 2016, 70% of them are unnecessary products, and the annual debt service accounts for 10 percent of total imports.
He mentioned that, since 2011, Tunisia has been experiencing a continuous worsening of the trade deficit to reach KD 3878.9 million in March 2017 compared to JD 2466 million during the same period of the previous year, and the trade deficit with Turkey increased making Tunisia comes second after China. He added that, these amounts of money reflects an anarchic manifestation of the Tunisian economy, since the volume of imports approximately equals the smuggled sold goods in the Tunisian markets, and this phenomena is far more dangerous to the economy than smuggling itself.