Tunisia’s budget deficit has narrowed by 46%, at the end of the first half of the current year, compared to the same period of the previous year to 1.8 billion dinars, against 3.4 billion at the end of June 2020, according to the provisional results of the execution of the state budget.
This reduction in the deficit is the result of the increase in budgetary resources, particularly tax revenues, at a faster pace than that of expenses.
Indeed, budgetary resources stood at 15.9 billion dinars at the end of last June, compared to 14 billion on the same date a year ago, a growth of 13.6%.
This is mainly the result of the increase in tax revenues by 16.7% from 12.6 billion dinars to 14.8 billion. On the other hand, non-tax revenues dropped 17% to 1 billion dinars.
The increase in non-tax revenues is mainly due to the increase in tax revenues of 16.7% to 14.8 billion dinars.
At the level of tax revenues, direct taxes increased by 5.5% at the end of last June to 6.2 billion dinars. In detail, income taxes went up 7.1% to 4.6 billion dinars, including 3.2 billion taxes on salaries (+13.4%).
For revenue from corporate taxes, they increased slightly by 1.3% to 1.6 billion dinars due to the increase in taxes on non-oil companies by 8% to 1.3 billion dinars. As for the tax on oil companies, it fell by 21.7% to 281.8 million dinars.
As for indirect taxes, they increased by 26.5% to 8.5 billion dinars. This growth is mainly due to the rise in customs duties by 25.6% to 703.1 million dinars, VAT by 32.1% to 4.2 billion dinars and consumption rights by 21.5% to 1.5 billion dinars. In addition, other indirect taxes post an increase of 20.4% to 2.2 billion dinars.
As regards the total expenditure of the state, they stood at 17.6 billion dinars, at the end of last June, against 17.3 billion a year earlier, recording a slight increase of 1.6%.
Budgetary expenses are composed mainly (57%) of salary expenses which reached 10 billion dinars recording a growth of 6%, intervention expenses of 3.6 billion dinars (+15.8%) and financing expenses (interest on debt) of 1.9 billion dinars (+0.5%).
