Tunisia-Tunisia ends the year with a budget deficit of 9.4% of GDP and 660,000 civil servants

For the first time, the Ministry of Finance favoured not to publish the finance law on its official website for unexplained causes. Today, Tuesday, November 16, it issued the data for the central sections of the 2021 complementary finance law promulgated by presidential decree at the JORT.

Unsurprisingly, Tunisia finishes this year with a budget deficit of 9.792 billion dinars due to the fact that budget expenditure is 44.241 billion dinars as opposed to budget revenue of 34.449 billion dinars. Retail budget revenue is composed of 30.816 billion dinars in tax revenue, 3.103 billion dinars in non-budgetary revenue and donations for 530 million dinars.

In addition, the external borrowing resources are set at 12.150 billion dinars while the internal borrowing resources are valued at 8.120 billion dinars. The principal repayment of the domestic debt is rated at 4.953 billion dinars while the principal repayment of the external debt is valued at 6.176 billion dinars.

The workforce in the public sector stands, according to data given at 661,703 civil servants. It should be evoked that the Ministry of Finance has not published any numbers concerning the monitoring of the execution of the budget for the current year for a long time since the latest data was updated and presented in regard to the first eight months of the fiscal year 2021. The same ministry which does not give the national accounts according to the international standards “International Financial Reporting Standards” has not disclosed any detailed information concerning the Tunisian public debt since 2012 and the information concerning the accounts of public enterprises that relate to the 2018 financial year.