Tunisia’s trade deficit has reached an all-time high of 25.2 billion dinars at the end of 2022, against 16.2 billion dinars in 2021, up 9 billion dinars or 55%.
According to data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) Wednesday, the coverage rate has lost 4.7 points compared to the year 2021 to 69.5%.
This large trade imbalance results from the acceleration of the increase in imports at a rate much higher than that of exports.
Indeed, imports have risen by 31.7% (against +22% in 2021) to a record of 82.8 billion dinars, compared with 62.8 billion in 2021. As for exports, have increased by 23.4% (against +20.5% in 2021) to 57.5 billion dinars, from 46.6 billion in 2021.
The increase in imports comes from soaring energy imports (+83.1) and the rise of those of raw materials and semi-finished products (+33%), capital goods (+12%) and consumer goods (+13.8%).
As for the increase in exports, it has affected sales of energy (+49.9%), mining, phosphates and derivatives (+56.1%), food industries (+34.1%), textiles, clothing and leather (+21%) and mechanical and electrical industries (+14.5%).
Moreover, the trade deficit realized in 2022 comes mainly from the deficit recorded with some countries, such as China (8.532 MD), Turkey (3.958 MD), Algeria (3.908 MD), Russia (2.758 MD), as well as Italy (2.302 MD) and Spain (772,3 MD).
On the other hand, the balance of trade in goods recorded a surplus with other countries, mainly France (4.432 MD), Germany (2.944 MD) and Libya (1.899 MD).
On the other hand, the results show that the deficit of the trade balance excluding energy is reduced to 14.6 billion dinars. Thus, the deficit of the energy balance hit a record high of 10.5 billion dinars (41.9% of the total deficit) against 5.2 billion dinars in 2021.
