Tunisia: Major decisions announced by Head of State on 23rd anniversary of Change

In his address to the nation on the occasion of the celebration of the 23rd Anniversary of the November 7, 1987 Change, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali announced a set of wide ranging measures in all sectors of activity.
 Here are the major ones:
– Start a new round of social negotiations at the beginning of 2011.
– Set up an organisational framework to exercise the activity of measuring radio and television audiences.
– Reinforce privileges granted to businesses within the framework of integration of job-seekers who remained unemployed for longer periods, privileges according to which the State pays, during a period of three years, the employers’ contributions to the statutory system of social security.
– Extend these privileges to include job-seekers that have been higher-education graduates for two years, following the example of those having been graduates for three years.
– Provide research centres which have distinguished themselves for scientific production, with additional resources to enhance their international prestige.
– Make preparations for implementation of the Oued Zarga-Bousalem motorway, the Gabès-Medenine motorway and the Medenine-Ras Jedir motorway
– Make preparations for implementation of the motorway: Enfidha-Kairouan-Sidi Bouzid-Kasserine-Gafsa, as well as for the widening of the Hammamet-Enfidha motorway.
– Started on building and rehabilitating 1,220 km throughout the present phase besides building 760 km of rural tracks.
– Integrate Tunisia into the system of marine highways, and increase the contribution of the national fleet to the shipping of Tunisian foreign trade. – Started on implementing the logistic zone in Radès, developing the present port in Zarzis, establishing a zone of logistic and industrial services and setting up commercial and industrial zone in Benguerdène.
– Generalise Internet broadband connection of different regional and local administrative services as of 2011.
– Restructure the Internet sector so as to provide new high-quality and preferentially-priced services.
– Establish a “Tunis Technology Centre” on an area of approximately 300 hectares in a first phase.
– Introduce a second batch of reforms within the Finance Law for 2011, with the aim of enhancing the competitiveness of the enterprise and boosting investment.
– Reduce customs duties by lowering the maximum rate from 36% to 30% and reduce the rate or exempt from them in respect of 1250 customs categories.
– Create a deposit and guarantee fund as from next year to serve as a tool for supporting or establishing enterprises and creating jobs.
– Formulate an executive programme for the full convertibility of the dinar in two phases along with a radical review of the Exchange Code to reconcile it with the full convertibility of the dinar.