Tunisia’s trade deficit eased to 16.543 billion dinars at the end of last November, compared with 23.296 billion dinars in the 11 months of 2022, an improvement of 28%.
The coverage rate increased by 8.1 points compared to the same period in 2022, reaching 77.2%.
According to figures published by the National Institute of Statistics (INS), this situation is the result of a trend characterized by more dynamic exports (+7.6%) than imports (-3.7%).
In fact, in the eleven months of 2023, exports increased by 7.6% compared to +24% in the same period of 2022, reaching 56,114 million dinars compared to 52,149 million in 2022.
As for imports, they recorded a decrease of 3.7% compared with an increase of 33% last year to reach 72,657 million dinars compared with 75,445 million during the eleven months of 2022.
The increase in exports concerned the foreign sales of the agro-food industry (+14.1%), the textile, clothing and leather industry (+8.4%) and the mechanical and electrical industry (+16.8%). On the other hand, exports of energy fell by 23.5% and exports of mining, phosphates and derivatives by 25.7%.
The decline in imports was due to the fall in purchases of energy products (-8.1%) and raw materials and semi-finished goods (-7.1%), while imports of capital goods and consumer goods increased by 2.4% and 2.3% respectively.
In addition, the trade balance is in deficit mainly due to the deficit recorded with certain countries, such as China (TND -7.759 bn), Russia (TND -6.385 bn), Algeria (TND -3.932 bn), Turkey (TND -3.002 bn), Brazil (TND -1.228 bn) and Egypt (TND -804.4 mln).
On the other hand, the balance of trade in goods recorded a surplus with other countries, mainly France (TND 5.340 bn), Germany (TND 2.587 bn), Libya (TND 2.098 bn) and Italy (TND 1.346 bn).
It should be noted that the trade deficit excluding energy fell to TND 7.432 bn. In fact, the energy deficit amounted to TND 9.110 bn (55.1% of the total deficit), compared with TND 9.195 bn in the eleven months of 2002.
