Tunisia’s trade balance deficit has reached an all-time high at 21.3 billion dinars at the end of October, against 13.3 billion during the ten months of the year 2021, widening by 8 billion dinars (+60%). Consequently, the coverage rate has lost 5.1 percentage points to 68.9%.
This result is still largely explained by the deficit recorded with some countries, such as China (-7.3 billion dinars), Turkey (-3.3 billion), Algeria (-2.9 billion), Russia (-2.4 billion), and Italy (-1.9 billion) and Spain (-0.7 billion).
Excluding energy, the trade balance deficit narrowed to 13.4 billion dinars. Indeed, the deficit in the energy balance is 7.9 billion dinars (37.2% of the total deficit) against 4 billion during the ten months of the year 2021.
According to data released by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) on Thursday, November 10, 2022, exports went up 24.9% to 47.3 billion dinars, against 37.8 billion at the end of October 2021.
As for imports, they recorded an increase of 34% to 68.6 billion dinars, against 51.2 billion during the ten months of the past year. This increase in imports is due to the rise in purchases of energy products (+83.6), raw materials and semi-finished products (+41.9%), capital goods (+13.7%), and consumer goods (+14.7%).
The increase observed in exports during the ten months of the year 2022 concerns the sales of the energy sector (+59.9%), those of mines, phosphates and derivatives (+70.7%), those of food industries (+33.9%), those of textiles, clothing and leather (+21.6%) and those of mechanical and electrical industries (+14.1%).
