Tunisia’s foreign trade remains unbalanced. According to data published on Thursday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the country’s trade deficit widened to 8.4 billion dinars in the first five months of 2025, compared to 6.4 billion dinars during the same period in 2024.
This 31% increase is due to a significant disparity in the growth rates of exports and imports. While exports grew by just 0.3% to reach 26.8 billion dinars, imports surged by 6.1% to reach 35.2 billion dinars.
At the sectoral level, exports showed mixed performances. Some sectors performed well, such as mining, phosphates and derivatives (+12.9%), the mechanical and electrical industries (+6.4%), and textiles, clothing and leather (+2%).
Conversely, significant declines were also recorded. Notably, the energy sector collapsed by 30.7%, primarily due to a sharp decline in refined product sales (falling from 788 million dinars to 150 million dinars year-on-year).
Meanwhile, the agri-food industry fell by 18.5%, primarily due to a decline in olive oil exports (down from 3 billion dinars to 2.1 billion dinars).
The trend on the import side is clearly upwards in several strategic categories, including capital goods (up 22.2%), raw materials and semi-finished products (up 8.4%), and consumer goods (up 14.7%).
In contrast, imports of energy products fell by 16.9%, while food product imports dropped slightly by 1.9%.
The structure of the trade deficit is still heavily influenced by the cost of energy, which accounts for over half of the total deficit at -4.33 billion dinars.
This is followed by raw materials and semi-finished products (-2.9 billion dinars), capital goods (-1.4 billion dinars), and consumer goods (-500.9 million dinars).
However, it should be noted that there was a surplus of 744 million dinars in the food trade, which is a positive point in an otherwise unfavorable overall context. Finally, excluding the energy sector, Tunisia’s trade deficit fell to 4 billion dinars, which is a slight improvement compared to the first five months of 2024.
