Tunisia – The priorities of the government’s plan to exit from the crisis

In the middle of a health and socio-economic crisis, the government is obliged to play firefighters, and tackle the disasters that overwhelm the situation, following a tight order of priorities.

The priorities of the government for this period are in fact also urgent as each other and necessarily, Inter-related and entangled. This urged the presidency of the government, in an effort to give as much importance to all files, to task separate work teams, each operating on its own file.

The administration’s current concerns are focused on three priorities:

• Managing the Covid pandemic
• Negotiations with the IMF, and what has been called the “17 billion fight”.
• Reforms to be implemented in cooperation with the social partners

Without skipping the social support of families in vulnerable situations, during the month of Ramadan.

The presidency of the government has consequently set up three working groups to address these three priorities. Because, in Kasbah, we realised that the problem rests in the lack of coordination and solidarity between the various departments. Therefore the need to build these working groups in which the various departments concerned are represented for more effectiveness in the work.

The government’s first concern is to battle the pandemic with the available means, by optimizing the usage of resources. Then getting the famous 17 billion, which are essential for the development of the economic recovery plan, and, ultimately, the cooperation with the social partners, and above all, the UGTT, to lead to the implementation of the reforms, needed to be able to convince the funders to make concessions.

Finally, a realistic approach to the problems and a prioritization which is compatible with the short means made available to the government and which force this approach; As long as we give these teams time to to make progress with their work and not bother them too much with the imposition of opinions that don’t make any sense, or hearings that are as sterile as demanding!