Tunisia’s trade deficit continued to narrow at the end of September. According to data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INS), it narrowed to TND 14 billion, down from TND 19.4 billion in the first nine months of the year.
This is the result of the combined effect of a 7.5% rise in exports to TND 45.4 billion and a 3.7% fall in imports to TND 59.4 billion. As a result, the ratio of imports to exports increased by 8 points to 76.5% compared to the same period last year.
On the export side, the increase observed in the first nine months of 2023 concerned the agro-food industry (+17%), the textile, clothing and leather industry (+10.5%) and the mechanical and electrical industry (+18.3%).
On the other hand, exports of energy fell by 38.2% and exports of mining, phosphates and derivatives by 23.9%.
The decline in imports was due to a fall in imports of energy products (-8.3%) and raw materials and semi-finished goods (-6.4%), while imports of capital goods and consumer goods increased by 0.1% and 3.4% respectively.
Tunisia’s trade deficit at the end of September was mainly due to the deficit recorded with certain countries, such as China (TND 6,224 million), Russia (TND 4,973 million), Algeria (TND 3,410 million), Turkey (TND 2,333 million), Ukraine (TND 902.7 million) and Egypt (TND -708.8 million).
On the other hand, the balance of trade in goods recorded a surplus with other countries, mainly France (TND 4.094 bn), Germany (TND 2.233 bn), Libya (TND 1.725 bn) and Italy (TND 805.9 mln).
In addition, the INS points out that the trade deficit excluding energy fell to TND 6,372 million. As a result, the energy deficit stood at TND 7.6 billion at the end of September (54% of the total deficit), compared with TND 7 billion in the first nine months of 2002.
