Tunisia’s trade balance recorded a noticeable improvement at end September 2015, with a rate of coverage of imports by exports of 111% at the end of September 2015, against 53% during the same period in 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries announced Tuesday.
It added in a statement that the rate of coverage of imports by exports throughout the year could reach 105% in 2015 against 60% in 2014.
The Department of Agriculture expects, in this context, an increase in food exports by 80% and a 5% rise for imports throughout 2015.
This improvement in the trade balance is explained by the Ministry by the evolution of food exports at a faster pace than imports (124% against 7% for imports).
This is especially explained by record olive oil revenues, accounting for 56% of the volume of exports against 17% in the same period last year.
These (revenues) amounted to 1,697 MTD, i.e. a volume of 273,400 tonnes of oil, of which 15,600 tons of packaged olive oil, worth 120 MTD against 43,100 tons during the first nine months of the previous year.
These revenues have resulted in financial surplus in the trade balance of 298.4 MTD.
According to the same source, the food products trade contributed during the aforementioned period to improve the export-import coverage ratio by 4.4 percentage points to 68.7% against 64.3% excluding food products.
