The budget deficit will range between 2,500 and 2,900 million Tunisian dinars (MTD), or 6.5% of the state budget, at the end of 2016, said Faycal Derbel, honorary president of the Order of Chartered Accountants of Tunisia.
In a statement to TAP on the sidelines of the parliamentary study days on “financial balances and requirements of the stage,” held in Hammamet, the accountant noted that public
finances are facing significant crisis.
“The current situation is very critical especially as the deficit reached 2,200 MTD on 30 June 2016, which is a record that Tunisia has not experienced during the last decade”, Derbel said.
He added that “the mastery of the deficit requires urgent solutions”, referring to the development of a supplementary finance law, besides accelerating the process of selling confiscated property, the privatization of some public institutions that encounter difficulty, while maintaining such vital companies as STEG and SONEDE and adoption of a new national exceptional tax or outstanding participation on the profits of large companies and high incomes.
For Derbel, it is now difficult to resort once again to debt to master this deficit all the more so that the public debt ratio has reached 60% in Tunisia.
