The National Institute of Statistics (INS) of Tunisia, in collaboration with IFC (a member of the World Bank Group), launched a survey to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the private sector.
This survey, in 3 phases, is conducted by telephone among a panel of 2,500 companies representative of the private sector. The first wave of the survey was conducted in May and June 2020.
One of the main results of this survey was that the majority of the companies were active on June 30, 2020: 88.7% of the companies declared themselves to be active, of which 24.5% without interruption and 64.2% re-opened after interruption, while 10.8% of companies were still temporarily closed. 0.4% shut down permanently.
However, 35% of the active businesses declare that they face a risk of permanent closure under the current conditions and 72.4% of the businesses declare that they may not be able to cover some of their expenses with the funds available.
In terms of employment, one of the main results of the survey was that private sector enterprises would have made limited adjustments during the month of April: 50.1% of enterprises said they had not made any adjustments, 18.7% would have given paid holidays and 9.6% would have given unpaid holidays.
11.5% of firms reported making wage reductions. Only 4.5% of businesses reported layoffs in April and 1.2% hiring.
