The Gross Domestic Product, GDP, of Tunisia (in volume) recorded a growth of 0.8% in the fourth quarter of 2019, compared to the same quarter of the year 2018 and of 0.1% compared to the third quarter of 2019, the National Institute of Statistics (INS) announced on Saturday.
In the first three months of 2019, manufacturing value added fell by 0.1% year-on-year, due to lower production in the textile, clothing and footwear sector (-6.2%), the mechanical and electronic industries sector (-2.9%) and the chemical industries sector (-1.0%).
On the other hand, the added value in the agro-food industries sector went up 10.7%, due to the increase in olive oil production.
Similarly, the value added in the sector of the building materials industry posted a 3.2% increase due to higher cement production.
As for value added in the non-manufacturing sector, it went down 0.3% compared to the same period last year, mainly due to the continued decline in output in the oil and gas extraction sector by 8.1% compared to 2018.
However, data showed that the mining sector went up 44.4% at the end of last December due to the growth of phosphate production, to 1.3 million tons in the fourth quarter, compared to 0.6 million tons in the same quarter of 2018. Annual phosphate production is expected to reach 4.1 million tons in 2019.
In addition, value added in the Agriculture and Fisheries sector fell by around 1.9% year-on-year. In this respect, the sector achieved a growth of 0.8%.
