Tunisia’s public debt reached at the halfway point of the year an outstanding amount of 99.3 billion dinars, compared to 92.9 billion dinars at the end of the year 2020 and 41 billion dinars in 2014, according to the provisional results of the execution of the state budget until June 30, 2021.
The public debt is composed of 37.3 billion dinars (37.5%) of domestic debt (including syndicated loans in foreign currency) and 62 billion dinars of external debt.
For the first half of 2021, the main donors are the European Union (EU) with 970 million dinars mobilized, the AfDB with 590.7 million dinars, the World Bank (IBRD) with 531.9 million dinars, the AFC, which provided 330 million dinars and KFW with 248 million dinars.
Note that no dinar was mobilized in the first half of 2020 neither from the IMF (2.18 billion in the first half of 2020) nor on the international financial markets.
The 2021 finance law expects 759.2 million dinars to be raised from the IMF and 6,560 million dinars to be borrowed from the financial markets in 2021.
The outstanding public debt as of June 30, 2021 should certainly be adjusted for the two repayments made in July and August of the two bonds with the guarantee of the United States of America for amounts equivalent to 2.8 billion dinars.
But on the other hand, the outstanding amount should also be corrected for the record outflows of the treasury in short term treasury bonds in recent months, which are not taken into account in the calculation of the outstanding debt.
The current stock of the short-term treasury bonds to be repaid in 2021 and 2022 amounts to 5.1 billion dinars.
According to the assumptions of the 2021 budget law, the public debt is projected at 109.2 billion dinars at the end of 2021.
On the basis of non-estimation of current GDP, public debt as of June 30, 2021 represents 81.2% of annual GDP 2021 and will be 90% by December 2021.
