The International environment was marked, in November 2009 by an ongoing appearance of indicators confirming economic recovery in most of the industrialized countries and improvement of its pace in the emerging countries, notably, the Asian ones, BCT Executive Board noted when meeting on November 26.
Despite this trend, the international financial institutions continued to stress the need to pursue recovery and financial support plan up to return back to the usual world economic growth pace, and to set up preparations and judicious programming in order to withdraw special measures taken during the crises and restore financial and monetary balances.
On the other hand the foreign exchange markets posted increasing demands on currencies with more remunerative rates and the indexes of the main world stock markets improved. Concurrently prices for most commodities went up.
As for the national economy, the agricultural production grew, notably, for cereals and tree-farming; whereas the sectors of energy and mining posted a recovery over the same period.
On the other hand, production index for manufacturing industries dropped compared to the previous year, though at a less pronounced pace over the past few months.
Similarly, tourism posted a certain tightening in tourist entries and overall bednights.
Concurrently, foreign trade decrease was pursued, in the wake of lower foreign demand and prices on the world market.
Worth of note that exports in the sectors of mechanical and electrical industries and in textile and clothing recorded 2.2% progress since last July 2009 compared to the same period of last year.
At the monetary level, M3 money supply and financing to the economy rose, over the first ten months of the current year, by 9.9% and 8.6% respectively compared to December 2008.
Excess liquidity on the money market was pursued in November 2009, and the Central Bank of Tunisia intervened to regulate banking liquidity. Day to day interest rate on this market fluctuated between 4.05% and 4.35% over this period.
Worth of note that interest rate on the money market reached an average of 4.22% in October.
Trend in the dinar on the foreign exchange market, from the beginning of the year and up to 25 November 2009, generated a 2.8% appreciation against the US dollar and a 3.1% depreciation against the euro.
As for trend in prices, the inflation control went on despite some pressure posted over the past few months, reaching 3.6% in average over the first ten months of the current year, compared to 5.2% in the same period of last year.
In light of these evolutions, the Executive Board decided to keep unchanged the key rate of the Central Bank of Tunisia while stressing the need to pursue efforts to help the economic recovery, to support businesses and provide the economy with the appropriate financing while preserving the financial balances.
