“As a doctrinal choice intended to ensure Tunisia’s independence and shield it from foreign dictates, sovereignism is based on a misunderstanding of the macroeconomic nature of our country’s current account deficit.”
This is what Professor Hachemi Alaya, a renowned Tunisian economist, asserts in his latest column in Ecoweek. “A sovereignism that impoverishes Tunisians and jeopardizes their future,” he warns.
According to the founder of the Tunisian think tank Tema, “The record of the economic policy based on ‘self-reliance,’ which has been pursued for more than four years, is overall negative.
The widening of Tunisia’s current account deficit is symptomatic of a triple drift: Tunisia imports more goods and services than it exports, it has indulged in consumption at the expense of savings and investment, and its social state, increasingly unaffordable, has fueled the rise of public and external debt.
In truth, sovereignism is impoverishing Tunisians and compromising the country’s future; it is merely a posture that risks shifting the country from one dependency to another, and a mystification that serves as a crutch for a stalled political and economic model.”
