The International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s World Economic Outlook (WEO) has just been released. The IMF maintains its forecast of growth of the Tunisian economy for the whole year 2022, compared to last April.
Indeed, the IMF expects the Tunisian economy to grow 2.2% in 2022, knowing that Tunisia
has recorded a growth of 2.4% and 2.8% in the first and second quarter of the year 2022, respectively. The IMF therefore projects a deceleration of growth in the third and fourth quarters of 2022.
In the current report, the IMF pointed out that “Tunisia’s forecast data, which were previously omitted due to ongoing technical discussions pending potential program negotiations, are now included. In terms of long-term projections, the IMF forecasts 2.6% growth in 2027.
With regard to consumer prices, IMF staff forecast average inflation for the year 2022 of 8.1% and 8.5% in 2023. However, inflation in Tunisia has been 7.8% on average, until September 2022.
The IMF analysts therefore anticipate a monthly inflation in the range of 8.9% to 9.5% for the remaining months of the year 2022. In any case, the IMF projects monthly inflation of 9.4% in December 2022 and 8.4% in December 2023. It will be 4.8% on average per year in 2027.
Much less optimistically, the IMF expects a current account deficit of 9.1% of GDP in 2022 (and 8% in 2023) against 6.1% in 2021.
In other words, the IMF anticipates a current account deficit of 14.5 billion dinars in 2022 against less than 8 billion dinars in 2021, a widening of the current account deficit of at least 75%.
Tunisia recorded a current account deficit of 10.8% of GDP in 2018. For 2027, the IMF expects the current account deficit to be 5.2%.
