The Global Tax Expenditures Transparency Index (GTETI) evaluates the quality and comprehensiveness of government reporting on tax expenditures.
Tax expenditures include all tax benefits, exemptions, reduced rates, tax credits, and departures from the standard tax system granted by a state to businesses and individuals.
The index does not assess tax policy itself, nor the volume of foregone revenue. Rather, it measures the degree of transparency with which countries report these fiscal choices.
Published jointly by the Council on Economic Policies (CEP) and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), the GTETI covers 116 countries and evaluates performance across five dimensions, each worth 20 points: institutional framework, methodology and scope, report accessibility, quality of descriptive data, and assessment of tax expenditure impacts.
In the 2026 ranking, Tunisia placed 27th globally out of 116 countries, with a score of 59.1 out of 100. Compared with the previous edition, the country climbed five places and secured the top position in both the Arab world and the Maghreb.
While this is a positive signal, a closer examination of the five dimensions paints a more nuanced picture.
The breakdown reveals where Tunisia performs well and where it falls short: institutional framework (17.4/20), methodology and scope (14.7/20), report accessibility (11.3/20), quality of descriptive data (9.3/20), and assessment of tax expenditure impacts (6.4/20). The top end of the ranking is solid; the lower end is more concerning.
Globally, tax expenditures represent an average of 3.7% of GDP and 23% of tax revenues among the 116 countries that reported data at least once between 1990 and 2023.
In Tunisia, previous estimates by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) put VAT exemptions alone at around TND 800 million, or 0.9% of GDP in 2016, while tax expenditures excluding VAT amounted to roughly 6% of tax revenues, according to the 2010 PEFA assessment.
These figures underscore the stakes involved: the revenue forgone is substantial, and transparency is a prerequisite for any serious public debate on fiscal policy.
Tunisia’s strength: A robust institutional framework
Tunisia achieved its highest score in the institutional framework category, earning 17.4 out of 20 points, or 87% of the maximum score. This reflects the existence of a clear legislative and regulatory basis for tax expenditure reporting, its integration into the budget process and clearly assigned reporting responsibilities within the administration.
The tax expenditure report is published annually as an annex to the Finance Law by the Ministry of Finance as part of Tunisia’s performance-based budgeting framework. This regular and formalized practice is the country’s main asset in the index.
The second dimension, methodology and scope, scored 14.7 out of 20, or 73.5%. This indicates that Tunisia has a clearly defined tax benchmark system, reasonably broad coverage of tax expenditure categories and a documented assessment methodology.
Tunisian reports classify exemptions by tax type (personal income tax, corporate tax, VAT, customs duties), form, beneficiary sectors and policy objectives. This analytical structure is a notable strength.
Weaknesses: Digital visibility and impact assessment
The third dimension, report accessibility and publication, received only 11.3 out of 20 points, or 56.5%. Although the reports exist and are published, their online visibility remains limited.
Digital access, proactive dissemination, and ease of consultation for ordinary citizens or non-specialist researchers are considered areas for improvement.
At a time when budget transparency increasingly relies on open-data portals, downloadable datasets, and interactive interfaces, Tunisia lags behind on this front.
The fourth dimension, descriptive data on tax expenditures, scored just 9.3 out of 20 points, or 46.5%.
This reflects shortcomings in the quality of information published about beneficiaries of tax incentives: who benefits, to what extent, and with what precise sectoral distribution. Without such granularity, the report remains more of an administrative inventory than a genuine public accountability tool.
The fifth dimension, and by far the weakest, is the evaluation of tax expenditures, which earned only 6.4 out of 20 points, or 32% of the maximum score.
This is where the shortcomings become most serious. The GTETI highlights the absence of detailed and reliable estimates of revenue losses for individual exemptions, as well as the lack of both ex ante evaluations (assessing expected impacts before implementation) and ex post evaluations (measuring actual impacts after implementation).
In other words, Tunisia knows which tax incentives it grants and records them, but it does not rigorously measure either how much they cost or whether they achieve their intended objectives. This is the fundamental limitation of a system that documents without evaluating.
Fifth in Africa, behind Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso
Within the Middle East and North Africa region, Tunisia ranks ahead of Morocco (33rd globally) and Mauritania (34th globally). This is a noteworthy performance for a lower-middle-income country competing with economies that often possess stronger institutional capacities.
Across Africa, Tunisia ranks fifth, behind Benin, the continent’s top performer and eighth globally, as well as Niger, Guinea, and Burkina Faso. The fact that several Sub-Saharan African countries, often perceived as having fewer administrative resources, outperform Tunisia deserves attention.
It reflects the budget reform efforts undertaken in these countries, frequently with support from international technical and financial partners, and demonstrates that success in the index depends as much on political will as on administrative capacity.
What this ranking really says about Tunisia’s fiscal policy
Tunisia regularly publishes a tax expenditure report within a formal legal framework. That achievement is established and internationally recognized. However, the report suffers from two major shortcomings that the overall score of 59.1 does not conceal.
The first is the absence of impact evaluation. Knowing that a tax exemption exists and identifying the sector to which it applies is not enough to support evidence-based fiscal policymaking.
Without estimating the actual cost of each tax incentive and evaluating its effectiveness in achieving its stated objectives, policymakers are effectively navigating in the dark.
Investors make decisions amid uncertainty, while Parliament votes on finance laws without a clear picture of what revenue the state is foregoing and why.
The second weakness lies in limited digital accessibility. A report attached to the Finance Law reaches budget experts and specialized researchers.
It does not effectively reach the broader public, the economic press, or civil society organizations. Transparency that does not circulate is not operational transparency.
This is all the more significant given that the Ministry of Finance largely makes decisions on its own and, when consultations do take place, they are generally conducted behind closed doors without clearly presenting intended reforms.
The ministry also retains sole authority over whether to publish the notes communes (administrative tax circulars), which constitute a cornerstone of Tunisia’s tax system. Several Finance Laws have been adopted without accompanying notes communes, making implementation difficult, if not impossible, in practice.
