Tunisia’s budget deficit reached 2.7 billion dinars at the end of April 2020, compared to a deficit of 1.4 billion on the same date of the previous year, i.e. a widening of 88%, an examination of the provisional results of the execution of the State Budget at the end of April 2020 showed.
The Finance Law for the year 2020 expects a budget deficit of 3.78 billion dinars representing 3% of GDP, against a deficit of 4 billion dinars (3.5% of GDP) for 2019.
Compared to the results recorded at the end of April 2019, total state revenue has almost stagnated (+0.9%) to reach 14.9 billion dinars.
It is composed of 9.5 billion dinars of own revenues (-10%) and 5.4 billion dinars of borrowing and treasury resources (+28.2%).
In detail, the State’s tax revenues amounted to 8.3 billion dinars during the first four months of the year, compared to 6.7 billion a year ago plus, i.e. a drop of 12.6%.
As for non-tax revenues, they posted a growth of 11.7% to 1.25 billion dinars.
At the end of last April, direct taxes stood at 3.7 billion dinars compared to 4.2 billion a year earlier, a drop of 11.8%.
This amount comes essentially from income tax of 2.88 billion dinars (+3.5%) and corporate tax of 830 million dinars (-41.7%), of which 229.3 million dinars was taxed on oil companies (-49%).
As for indirect taxes, they fell by 13.2% to 4.5 billion dinars. These taxes come mainly from VAT for 2.1 billion dinars (-15.5%), consumption duties for 848.1 million dinars (-5.1%) and Customs duties for 363.8 million dinars (-13.7%).
On the expenditure side, the virtual stagnation observed in the first quarter (+0.9%) is mainly due to the combined effect of the 2.6% increase in expenditure excluding principal and the 6.3% decrease in principal repayments.
In fact, non-principal expenditure stood at 12.26 billion dinars at the end of April.
They mainly come from management expenditure for 8.6 billion dinars (+20%), interest on debt for 1.38 billion dinars (-0.2%) and capital (development) expenditure for 930.6 million dinars (-51%).
As for the repayment of the principal of the debt, it went from 2.84 billion dinars at the end of April 2019 to 2.66 billion on April 30.
