The budget deficit worsened by 10% in 2022, compared to 2021, to reach about 11 billion dinars, according to the data of the document “Provisional results of the budget execution” published by the Ministry of Finance on Wednesday.
This is due to the increase in budgetary expenditure by 16.4% to 50.5 billion dinars, while budgetary resources were limited to almost 41 billion dinars (an increase of 22% compared to 2021).
The increase in expenditure is mainly due to the 42% rise in intervention expenditure, from 12.5 billion dinars to around 18 billion dinars. In addition, financing expenses (interest on debt) increased by 26% to 4.6 billion dinars and subsidy expenses by 4.7% to 21.1 billion dinars.
On the revenue side, the increase was favored by the positive evolution of both tax revenues, up by 16% to 35.5 billion dinars, and non-tax revenues, up by 34% to 4.1 billion dinars.
It should be noted that the tax burden went up to 24.5% at the end of December 2022, compared to 23.3% at the end of December 2021.
The Ministry of Finance also pointed out that cash resources amounted to 19.5 billion dinars at the end of 2022, which included almost 93% of borrowed resources (18.1 billion dinars).
These resources will be mainly used to repay the principal of the debt (9.7 billion dinars) and to finance the deficit (9.5 billion dinars).