If you didn’t know him well, you would think that the entrepreneur he has been was not influenced by his few months on the other side of the fence at La Kasbah, and that he had quietly gone back to his little business.
However, the man is no longer in the dry figure of the hardcore financier, as he was in the family group. He seems to have finally discovered the other world, that of the poor and those forgotten by growth, of agriculture which should once again become a pillar of the economy, of the oppressed of the economy, of solidarity, and even speaks of “breaking the lopsided economy”. Has he become a “socialist”? It’s true that he was a socialist in his youth, but he now claims to be a pragmatist!
Strange positions for a former financier and minister
Fadhel Abdelkefi certainly does not yet have the pen that would allow him to draw the famous “stroke of a pen” that now sticks with him, but he now knows the places and texts where it would be necessary to do so and affix the famous pen stroke to get out of the economic recession. He is certainly not a beloved, if not more so, of the head of state. But he undoubtedly commands respect for his economic and financial lucidity and his political insight.
On the cost of living, and contrary to many other “experts” who had tried their hand at politics, this former Minister of Finance and Development spoke out against the reduction of the wage bill, which the IMF makes a condition for giving loan to Tunisia.
He is hard on the distribution channels, against which he demands a stronger state. He is against the injustice of fuel prices at the pump, and for maintaining the subsidy of gas cylinder prices. Those positions could cause him teeth grinding. But judging by his facial expressions when he spoke to us about it, he seemed to be convinced.
The three indecencies of a new Abdelkefi
The former minister, from a family of born investors and builders, returned to Tunisia after studying abroad to continue and enrich the action of his father (Sid ‘Ahmed for his family), now speaks of a “private sector in solidarity with those forgotten by growth”. The financial market specialist speaks of “social redistribution of prosperous companies”, because he finds it “indecent to see our children just dreaming of leaving the country. It is indecent to see the state of the environment in Tunisia. It is indecent today to see a rate of 25% for extreme poverty, and indecent to see 18% unemployment”. Far from ignoring the effects of the inflated wage bill on the state budget and inflation, the man nevertheless takes the opposite view of many experts on the decline of this mass, almost touching the speech of Noureddine Tabboubi with his fingers, I don’t think it’s a playable track to go and say that and talk to them about a restrictive policy or an austerity policy, to people who are facing more and more expensive costs”. He instead advocates increasing the country’s wealth.
He almost sounds like the (less loud and angry) head of state (not the whole state). But with confirmed economic and financial knowledge, and a program that he says he has already put in place with his economic think-tank headed by another businessman who does not always have his tongue in his pocket, Nafaa Ennaifer.
“I come back to my story of the stroke of the pen. There are laws in several sectors of activity that hinder investment, such as the foreign exchange law, article 96 of the penal code, and the excessively long procedures for calls for tender and studies.
It would be enough, for example, for the investment, that the prime minister decides to release all that we had signed at 20/20 in 2017.
Billions of TNDs remained within Tunisia’s borders. Financing signed and ready, public projects for which we were able to raise the debt under investment conditions, very long terms and at good rates and grace periods. Public projects, such as the Bizerte bridge, for which we have been looking for the tracing for 6 years, the East and West motorways, the Port of Radès, the desalination stations, 12 class B hospitals, the hospital of Kairouan, whose financing is a gift and which has still not started, and I forget”, he told us dismayed, like many of those who still refuse to listen to populist rhetoric, in an interview with AfricanManager.
“Where are you with your cranes,” BCE asked him.
And as if the “stroke of a pen” wasn’t enough for him, here he is elaborating on “the crane theory”. Clearly a Keynesian, he brings up his theory of normative economics, which says that “to shake the market out of its inertia, the state increases public spending and decreases tax taxation in order to give consumption a boost. By injecting money into the economy, the government also helps to stimulate production, leading to a return to full employment. In simpler terms, Fadhel Abdelkefi says that, as during the 1929 crisis, people would be asked to dig three holes and fill them up.
The former minister cited an anecdote with former president Béji Caïed Essebssi “who asked me how we would get out of it. I replied that when Tunisians see the cranes installed everywhere, social tension will drop and people will go back to work. Since then, and every time he met me, he would say “So where are you with your cranes?
It is indeed true that since 2011, what was left of the cranes from the old projects has been put at half-mast, due to a lack of public investment, sometimes diverted to other state expenditure. Investment expenditures that were planned to exceed 4.2 billion TND, for example, and of which the State had only spent 3.1 billion TND until last November. Public investment is also severely hampered by the inability of the State to pay its suppliers and even to facilitate the implementation of projects pre-financed by the IsDB and the AfDB, as the prime minister recently noted.
The Prime Minister and her Head of State, however, have the pen to draw a line under a lot of mismanagement, and to draw up the cranes that would give back its meaning to investment in the eyes of a population, depressed in the expectation of an economic recovery that has been for two years bundled in a political crisis without end.
