Tunisia will host on November 29 and 30 the international conference on investment. This is the second of its kind in Tunisia after the 2014 with the government of Mehdi Jomâa under the theme “Invest in Tunisia, start-up democracy”.
Called “Tunisia 2020”, the meeting will bring together heads of state, major international institutions and Tunisian and foreign private operators and investment funds. It will actually host 70 countries, 150 opinion leaders and more than 1,500 participants.
This major event, which comes in the wake of a promotion campaign launched by the Tunisian government in June and that targeted investors and partners from countries around the world, aims to improve the image of Tunisia.
“Our goal is to highlight the strengths of the Second Republic,” said Mourad Fradi, co-commissioner general of the International Investment Conference at a press briefing on Thursday, September 15, 2016. He indicated that the achievement of this objective also hinges on the valorization of the 2016-2020 development plan.
An ambitious plan for development
“The international community needs to learn more about the ambitions of the plan and the program of reforms of the Tunisian government,” DG of the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency (FIPA), Khalil Laabidi said for his part.
The plan aims to increase the attractiveness of the economy to strengthen the leading role of the private sector in growth and promote national and international investments… he recalled.
According to government forecasts, the strategic plan will accelerate growth and create 400, 000 jobs throughout this five-year period, which will reduce the unemployment rate to less than 12% and extreme poverty to 2% in 2020 against 4.6% currently.
This plan, whose implementation requires the mobilization of $ 60 billion of investment, is based on five priority axes. The first is good governance, administrative reform and the fight against corruption. The second area relates to the transition from a low-cost economy to an economic hub, while the third regards human development and social inclusion. For the last axes, they aim at achieving the ambitions of regions and the establishment of a green economy.
It is for this reason that significant funds have been mobilized to promote the plan, which includes the organization of the international conference “Tunisia 2020”. To this end, 4.5 million dinars has been mobilized by a consortium of French investment bank ARJIL & Associates, the Tunisian design office COMETE Engineering and media group Jeune Afrique. The latter is retained by the Tunisian Republic to conduct promotional activities of the Development Plan 2016 – 2020.
The pace of investment revised upwards!
The organization of this event comes at an opportune time when the country still needs any type of investment (public, private and foreign) to meet the challenges faced.
This is important insofar as the government’s expectations are very high compared to that plan. In fact, the pace of investment will increase to about 4% over this period, from 19.4% currently to 24% in 2020, said Khalil Laabidi.
He added: “Our goal is to move from a public-private investment budget of around 80 billion dinars to 120 billion dinars, which will subsequently increase the investment ratio of the two sectors, respectively 60 and 40%, and to bring them to 50% each.”
