Development expenditures in the budget law for 2022 are estimated at TND 229 million and will be allocated to support the industrial and energy sectors, according to the report on the state budget for the year 2022 in the field of industry, energy and mining.
The same document showed Tunisia will work in 2022 to adopt a program of use of photovoltaic energy in public buildings. That project is part of the process of encouraging the domestic production of electricity by adopting solar energy in buildings owned by public institutions, including public health institutions and universities, through their connection to the network.
This is likely to reduce the demand of these structures in electrical energy from the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company, thus reducing their electrical energy consumption bill.
The needs of the proposed payments for the year 2022 are estimated at TND 9.7 million to be financed by an external loan granted by the German Development Bank as the first tranche of the total cost of the project estimated at about TND 112 million.
In the report on the state budget 2022, the government revealed its forecasts for hydrocarbon production, indicating that it will reach 2.222 million tons of crude oil and 2.268 million tons of gas oil equivalent, while the volume of consumption of oil and natural gas will amount to 5.778 million tons, or 1.6% more than expected.
The report also indicates that the consumption of finished petroleum products will change by about 0.7% in 2022 compared to the estimates for the year 2021, while Tunisia will import 2.944 million tons of oil products ready for use, against 2.905 million tons for the year 2021.
On the other hand, the supply of Algerian gas will increase by 7.6% in 2022 to 2.696 million tons, in addition to the payment of a Saudi loan of 120 million dinars to Aramco in exchange for the purchase of petroleum products and the repurchase of 100 million dinars of products from the Tunisian Company of Refining Industries under the supplementary support subsidy for the year 2018.
The state has allocated 2.8 billion dinars to be disbursed in the form of a subsidy of TND 1.2 billion dinars to the Tunisian Company of Refining Industries and 1.6 billion dinars to the Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas.
A way to mop up STEG’s debts!
Indeed, the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (public company) is in a critical situation, plagued by financial imbalances due to the accumulation of its debts in recent years. These debts amounted to about TND 2,470 million, of which TND 1,100 million belonging to ordinary customers, with a rate varying between 40 and 45% of total debts.
The rest of the debts of STEG is divided into 90 million dinars with industrialists, more than 200 million dinars with municipalities, plus 539 million dinars with public institutions and 370 million dinars with ministries, institutions and other state institutions, until the end of October 2021.
The budget report of Tunisia for 2022 has estimated the financing needs for the system of hydrocarbons, electricity and gas in 2022 to 5.1 billion Tunisian dinars.
