Tunisia has been ranked the 96th poorest country in the world out of 150, according to an index developed by US magazine Global Finance, which ranks 184 countries in the world, from poorest to richest. Tunisia is ranked just after China (95th) and before Ecuador (97th).
As for Morocco, it is ranked 66th, Algeria (83th), Iraq (81th), Jordan 71th, Mauritania (35th), Cameroon (40th), Yemen (37th), Sudan (41th) Pakistan (47th), Djibouti (44th)…
There are two standard methods of measuring the wealth of countries and how rich or poor its inhabitants are. The measure most often used is Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which represents the size of a country’s economy.
A refinement of this is per-capita GDP, which is a measure of the average welfare and affluence, or poverty, of residents of a country. However, GDP and per-capita GDP are less useful when comparing economies across national boundaries – which one must do to determine the poorest countries in the world – because GDP is expressed in a country’s local currency.
According to figures compiled in the report, GDP per capita in Tunisia has increased slightly between 2009 and 2013, from 9.143 dollars a year to 10,200 dollars over this period.
These figures are still above the GDP per capita in countries like Algeria ($ 7,736), Morocco ($ 5,537) but less than that of Libya ($ 14,474).
In the Maghreb, Tunisia is ranked less poor than Morocco (5, 537 dollars) and Algeria (7,736 dollars).
According to Global Finance, the poorest country in the world is the Democratic Republic of Congo with a GDP that does not exceed $ 394 per capita. Zimbabwe is in second place ($ 428), followed by Burundi ($ 566).
It is noted, however, that at the Maghreb level, the 5 richest countries of North Africa are Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Egypt.
Not surprisingly, the richest country of the world is Qatar with a GDP per capita of more than $ 105,000 dollars, followed by Luxembourg ($ 79,593) and the small Republic of Singapore which came third ($ 61,567).
The African Development Bank (ADB) had announced in a publication dating from 2014 that 1.6 million Tunisians live below the poverty line, representing 15.5% of the Tunisian population, and 500 thousand of them do not even have access to food.
These results were obtained following a study by the AfDB and the National Statistics Institute (NSI) on poverty in Tunisia and the impact of the food subsidy by the state.
According to the same report of the AfDB, the poverty rate in inland areas is 35%, which explains 1 Tunisian out of 3 is below the poverty line.
Regarding the poverty rate in Tunisia, official figures currently suggest a rate of 24.7%
