The World Bank is by far Tunisia’s leading lender, with outstanding commitments of 14.1 billion Tunisian dinars, representing 19% of the country’s total external debt stock. The African Development Bank comes second with 8.1 billion dinars, followed by the International Monetary Fund with 5.3 billion dinars, although relations with the IMF have been stalled for several months, if not longer.
Afreximbank is also gaining ground with 5 billion dinars. Multilateral lenders together account for 64.9% of Tunisia’s total external debt stock.
61% of Treasury bonds held by local banks
Domestically, amid growing banking dependence on sovereign debt, outstanding Treasury Bonds (BTA) reached 28.4 billion dinars in September 2025, up 72% in a single year.
Faced with difficulties accessing foreign financing, the Treasury significantly increased BTA issuances. Local financial institutions, particularly banks and insurance companies, remain the main subscribers.
Sovereign securities accounted for 18.8% of total banking assets in December 2025, compared to 10.6% in 2020. The annual growth of this portfolio reached a record 22.4% in 2025, while loans to private companies increased by only 2.6%.
Tunisian banks hold 61% of the outstanding Treasury bond stock. Out of 28.4 billion dinars in BTA, this represents approximately 17.3 billion held by banks.
BNA: the state’s top lender by structure
The Banque Nationale Agricole (BNA)’s investment portfolio rose from 7.8 billion to more than 9.3 billion dinars in one year, an increase explicitly attributed to the massive acquisition of Treasury bonds.
In December 2025, the state partially settled the debt of the Grain Office to BNA, amounting to one billion dinars. Nearly half, 457.5 million dinars, was reinvested in 10-year Treasury bonds at a 9.4% interest rate.
The mechanism is straightforward: the state repays the bank, and the bank refinances the state.
BNA does not freely choose this positioning. The state owns 35% of the bank and BNA has historically carried the debts of struggling public enterprises, particularly the Grain Office and the agricultural sector.
With 21.4% of non-performing loans, BNA faces particularly high risk levels, which partly explains its shift toward safer assets, government securities. This is less a strategy than a move toward the only asset perceived as stable.
BIAT: the leading private financier by deliberate choice
BIAT’s investment portfolio reached 7.08 billion dinars, representing more than half of its outstanding customer loans. In 2015, this portfolio stood at only 321 million dinars.
The share of revenues generated by the investment portfolio in net banking income rose from 3% to 34% over ten years.
BIAT is not a captive bank. It maintains a healthy balance sheet, record liquidity (LCR of 668%), and a deposit base of 22.3 billion dinars. If it allocates 7.08 billion dinars to sovereign securities instead of financing the economy, it reflects a management strategy prioritizing balance-sheet security and regulatory compliance, a highly profitable choice, with portfolio revenues reaching 536 million dinars in 2025, or 34% of net banking income.
STB: publicly captive, undercapitalized, but committed
The Société Tunisienne de Banque (STB) strengthened its presence in the financial market with an 18.4% increase in its securities portfolio, which reached 4.5 billion dinars by mid-2025. Most of this consists of Treasury bonds, confirming the bank’s strategic role in financing public debt.
Like BNA, STB is a public bank whose sovereign portfolio reflects less a free choice than an implicit directive.
The bank is also suffering from this exposure, with a return on equity of only 3.5% in the first half of 2025, non-performing loans at 20.4%, and insufficient coverage at 64.3%.
Foreign-currency syndicated loans: BIAT dominates
Among public and documented operations, the largest credit offer came from BIAT, with 120 million euros and 100 million dollars. Attijari Bank Tunisia, Amen Bank, Al Baraka Bank Tunisia, Zitouna Bank and Wifak International Bank participated with much smaller foreign-currency contributions. Public banks did not exceed the equivalent of 25 million dinars each.
On foreign-currency syndicated loans, BIAT faces virtually no competition, neither from private nor public banks.
Final verdict
BNA finances the Tunisian state the most in domestic Treasury bonds and securities, with 9.3 billion dinars, largely due to structural constraints as a public bank.
BIAT, meanwhile, is the leading private financier of the state in Treasury bonds, with 7.08 billion dinars, reflecting a deliberate balance-sheet management strategy.
It is also the bank providing the largest foreign-currency financing to the state through syndicated loans, far ahead of all competitors.
Overall, BNA finances the state more in terms of gross domestic volume. But BIAT appears to be the institution whose commitment to the state is the most strategic and deliberate. In the foreign-currency segment, it has no rival in Tunisia’s financial market.
Attijari Bank Tunisia: the major absentee from sovereign financing
The paradox is striking. Attijari Bank is Tunisia’s second-largest private bank by assets, net banking income and net profit. Logically, it should rank among the state’s leading financiers. In reality, it comes fourth, behind two public banks, BNA and STB, and one private bank, BIAT, with a considerable gap.
With only 1.92 billion dinars in sovereign securities compared to BNA’s 9.3 billion and BIAT’s 7.08 billion, Attijari finances the state three to five times less than its direct competitors, despite having a comparable balance sheet size.
In syndicated foreign-currency loans, the difference is even more pronounced: during the 2021 syndicated loan, BIAT contributed 120 million euros and 100 million dollars, while Attijari provided only 35 million euros.
Three structural reasons explain this cautious stance
The first is shareholder structure. Attijari Bank is a subsidiary of Attijariwafa Bank, itself controlled by Al Mada, the Moroccan royal investment fund. Its foreign-currency liquidity management and sovereign exposure are therefore partly subject to group-level decisions.
A massive exposure to Tunisian Treasury bonds or sovereign foreign-currency loans represents a concentration risk on a sovereign rated Caa1 by Moody’s, something a listed parent company operating under Basel III standards cannot ignore.
The second is strategic. Attijari’s investment portfolio grew by 24.5% to reach 2.4 billion dinars, reflecting a gradual shift toward public securities amid weak credit demand.
The bank is increasingly favoring Treasury bonds over loans, adopting a defensive posture to protect its balance sheet, even at the expense of growth and its economic role.
The third relates to foreign-currency capacity. BIAT has been named Tunisia’s best bank in the foreign-exchange market for five consecutive years by Global Finance.
Its ability to mobilize euros and dollars through the Tunisian diaspora, exporters and international correspondent networks is structurally stronger than Attijari’s, whose model relies more heavily on domestic corporate clients. Lending foreign currency to the state requires having access to it and in this field, Attijari cannot compete.
The outcome is paradoxical but well documented: Tunisia’s second-largest private bank is only the fourth-largest financier of the state, behind two public banks and one private institution. This is not necessarily a criticism.
Faced with a BNA constrained by the state and a BIAT that is voluntarily deepening its exposure to Treasury bonds at the expense of productive lending, Attijari’s caution may ultimately prove to be the least risky strategy.
