In a letter to Prime Minister Elyes Fakhfakh, economist Radhi Meddeb and Professor Slaheddine Sellami have put forward proposals for the management of the current crisis.
It is a contribution to the national mobilization in the fight against the pandemic and proposals for the governance of this crisis and how to get out of it.
“It is now time to share it with the list of 68 prestigious signatures, including the four Nobel Peace Prize winners, four former ministers of health, more than twenty professors of medicine and pharmacy, business leaders, academics and influential figures from Civil Society”, add the two authors of the letter.
In the preamble of that letter, they set out “the challenges we must face, as a priority” and which are health-related in order to protect the maximum number of people, save as many lives as possible and stem the spread of the virus as quickly as possible.
They are also social in order to help the most underprivileged groups, workers who risk losing their jobs, day laborers and those working in the informal sector.
These challenges are also economic in order to preserve as much as possible our economic fabric and in particular our craftsmen, traders, farmers, start-ups, VSEs, SMEs and SMIs, which must continue to play their social role and above all resume their activities at the end of the crisis.
It is explained that “our strategy for the coming days must aim to protect the population as much as possible and to try to limit the duration of the lockdown as much as possible by anticipating the best scenario of progressive and targeted end of lockdown, to alleviate the suffering of the most deprived groups and avoid the risk of discontent if not a social explosion.
This risk would be all the more to be feared if the lockdown were to be extended beyond 19 April, without very strong accompanying measures having been taken urgently in favor of the most deprived”.
With regard to health, Radhi Meddeb and Slaheddine Sellami believe that “the decision to lockdown the population in general, adopted for an initial period of 15 days and extended for a further two weeks, is the right decision”.
It must be maintained, strengthened and completed in order to ensure the conditions for its implementation, they add, stressing that coercive measures are probably necessary, but the population’s support is more likely to come through education, supervision and economic support.
On the social level, the two co-signatories recall that Tunisia today has nearly two million people living below the poverty line, in addition to several other hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people.
Those populations need to be properly rescued during lockdown. A reference family basket should be defined, channeled through the army and distributed with the support of the authorities and local associations with a good knowledge of the terrain and the real needs of the inhabitants.
In the absence of transport capacity, equivalent financial aid should be distributed to needy families, through the same channels, in the vicinity.
This is an opportunity to make an electronic wallet available to the beneficiaries and on a network of partner traders, which could avoid the risks of grouping around the distribution points of aid in cash or in kind.
Proposed economic measures
In economic terms, emphasis is placed on the need for the health management of the crisis to be exemplary and for gradual exit from lockdown to be rapid in order to avoid a collapse of the economy.
The pandemic comes at a time when growth was already sluggish, when unemployment was persistently at unacceptable levels, when inflation remained high despite a recent downturn, when people’s purchasing power was being eroded, when public companies were running up deficits while private companies were struggling under the weight of taxes, social security charges and red tape, when social security funds were threatening to collapse, when the health system was faltering, when deindustrialization had been underway for several years…”.
We are aware that the room for manoeuvre in the State budget is limited if not non-existent,” they admit, calling for “large-scale interventions in favor of all
economic operators whom the measures announced [by the government] will not affect.
Here is the catalogue of the main economic measures advocated by Radhi Meddeb and Slaheddine Sellami:
– It is necessary to ensure that the criteria for eligibility of companies for the announced measures are known in an objective manner and that benefitting from these measures is not dependent on a committee that is left to itself or that would seek to minimize State expenditure in a situation of scarcity,
-In order to ensure the maximum chance of success for this business support approach, it is essential that it be carried out in close proximity.
Commercial banks should be responsible for examining the files of companies affected by the crisis.
It will be up to them to forward the files studied to the regional or national committee within a maximum period of 15 days.
The objective should be to provide each company with a minimum cash flow corresponding to a minimum of 45 days of its working capital requirement.
State intervention should take place, without disbursement, through a guarantee given to the bank of the beneficiary company.
-In parallel with all these measures, it is essential to enable firms which so wish and which offer the necessary health guarantees to resume their activities more quickly.
These guarantees could include sufficient physical distance on site, transport of personnel under approved conditions, barrier procedures in the workplace and daily medical check-ups with random and permanent tests.
The costs incurred by these measures would of course remain the responsibility of the company.
-Adequate treatments and precise mechanisms must be identified to reach all day laborers, agricultural workers, artisans and small-scale informal workers, those who leave daily in search of income, those who do not benefit from unemployment insurance, paid holidays or social security coverage.
These fragile and vulnerable economic actors escape the censuses of traditional social assistance recipients.
They are not, moreover, applicants for social assistance, but for support in coping with the constraints of lockdown.
-Microfinance must be given the means to show solidarity with its 450,000 beneficiaries.
Microfinance institutions provide support to these vulnerable economic operators and the informal sector for a volume of intervention exceeding one billion dinars.
It is important for the State to facilitate their refinancing and to relax, on a transitional basis, the prudential rules governing the sector, as has been done with banks.
– The Monetary Fund and the World Bank have just submitted a request to the G20 to freeze the debt of poor countries.
Tunisia is, certainly, not part of this category of countries. But we have been tested over the past few years by many geopolitical considerations over which we had no control. We must, with the support of a few close and friendly countries, rush into this breach that the Bretton Woods institutions are opening up for others.
-Debt-servicing is becoming unbearable in times of peace. It risks suffocating us in the war we are waging against the coronavirus. It is urgent that Tunisia engage with its donors in discussions of solidarity and responsibility for a better management of its external debt.
Such a step would in no way undermine Tunisia’s credibility and its permanent commitment to honor its commitments. It could enable it to free up a budgetary window to resume more sustained investment in infrastructure and the restoration of its competitiveness.
-The fall in oil prices will give a breath of fresh air to the state budget in 2020. It is important to optimize purchases with a judicious forward purchasing policy, after consultation with experts in the field.
In conclusion, Radhi Meddeb and Slaheddine Sellami assert that “we should not have to wait until the end of the pandemic to define a plan for the recovery and strategic repositioning of Tunisia.
The crisis confronts us with multiple challenges. Nevertheless, it presents us with considerable opportunities.
We must now set up multidisciplinary teams, identify these opportunities and have the ambition to anticipate changes towards a more united, inclusive and sustainable world.
