Tunisia

While the structure of Tunisia’s banking sector prevents it from adequately financing the economy at large, recent developments in the microfinance segment are helping to attract customers. The impact of these new players is especially being felt among the small business community.

In a context of significant macroeconomic challenges, Tunisia’s banking sector has demonstrated solid performance over 2017 and 2018. However, banking activity still faces several challenges, and its resilience in overcoming these will determine the success of its evolution over the coming years. Ongoing liquidity insufficiency, coupled with...

The three decades before the 2007-08 global financial crisis were marked by the world’s financial networks becoming increasingly interconnected. Financial system regulatory convergence, the growing penetration of World Trade Organisation rules and the creation of currency unions, such as the euro, resulted in a surge in cross-border capital...

Global trade faces protectionist headwinds that are dampening the outlook for growth in the coming years. According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), trade volume grew by 3% in 2018 and is expected to decline slightly to 2.6% in 2019 before rebounding back to 3% in 2020. This may be the first time since the 2007-08 global financial crisis...

As a strained budgetary situation has been a challenge to public investment, efforts have been made to encourage the private sector to take on a larger share of necessary works. To attract the interest of foreign and domestic investors, Tunisian authorities have strengthened the regulation overseeing public-private partnership (PPP) agreements...

As Tunisia attempts to balance its budget and free enough financial resources for investment programmes, dealing with the rise of business informality and tax evasion has become of paramount importance. Although exact figures on the issue are difficult to quantify, studies point to an increase in the volume of informal activity following the...