The budget deficit is expected to decline gradually over the next three years, from -6.6% of GDP (-11.5 billion dinars) at the end of 2024 to -5.2% of GDP (-9.8 billion dinars) in 2025 and -3.9% of GDP (around -8 billion dinars) at the end of 2026, according to the Medium-Term Budgetary Framework 2024-2026 recently published by the Ministry of Finance.
To achieve this, the Ministry of Finance forecasts a continuation of the upward trend in budgetary resources. The latter should reach 49 billion dinars in 2024 (+8.4% compared to 2023), 51.7 billion dinars (+5.3%) in 2025 and 56.2 billion dinars (+8.7%) in 2026.
It should be noted that budgetary revenues have been increasing in recent years, reaching 45.3 billion dinars in 2023, compared to 41 billion dinars in 2022 and 33.5 billion dinars in 2021. Budget expenditures, on the other hand, are expected to grow at a slower pace.
They are expected to increase by 6.7% to 59.8 billion dinars in 2024, before rising to 61.2 billion dinars (+2.4%) in 2025 and 63.8 billion dinars (+4.3%) in 2026 to finance compensation expenditure, i.e. the wage bill (26 billion dinars), intervention expenditure, in particular subsidies (19.5 billion dinars) and financing costs, i.e. interest on the debt (almost 8 billion dinars).
Investment expenditure will not exceed 5.8 billion dinars, representing only 9% of total budget expenditure by the end of 2026.
