When the boss of the French Treasury, Emmanuel Moulin, journeys to Tunis it inevitably will cause people to talk, some going so far as to produce assumptions about the size of the check he brought in his bags. We now understand that he left his chequebook at home and that he had come above all to listen, discuss and listen to the patient, Tunisia. And what we have just discovered is not likely to reassure about the state of the country and its horizons…
A source close to this affair informed Tunisie Numérique of the details of this critical meeting in many respects. We have learned that the concerns of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Tunisia (BCT) are not a figment of the imagination. The delay in the collection of external resources is extremely worrying when we know that Tunisia will have to disburse in 2022 some 2.3 billion dollars for debt service…
This is all the more troubling since to honour these repayment deadlines, Tunisia will definitely have to return to the good graces of the IMF, which will not occur before Tunis sets in action the structural reforms to which it has committed. with its major donor. In short, the snake bites its own tail and that is the worst situation in macroeconomics… The Director-General of the French Treasury landed in Tunisia to notify financial decision-makers, eye to eye, that they had consumed all their white bread and that it was required to get down to the reforms pledged to the IMF without delay.
This is the only way to put yourself in a good place to face the next debt repayment deadlines, and that begins next April… For those who have not yet understood, what Moulin stated means only one thing: There will be no bilateral aid, the time when France signed checks for direct budgetary support is over, there is no lack of glitches at the moment.
The other Western partners will not do better outside the channels of the IMF. Tunisia will have to work with the extremely strict framework suggested by the international institution to hope for a little oxygen…
Officially “the man who whispers in the ears of presidents” was in Tunis to loan a hand to the Debt Agency. The debt or rather its repayment will very quickly become Tunisia’s number 1 problem, as Moulin said. It is to be expected that he will not return to Tunis with his cap as President of the Paris Club, because there it will be the beginning of a long tunnel of which the country will hardly see the end…
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