Tunisia’s trade balance deficit reached 13.7 billion dinars at the end of July, against a deficit of 8.7 billion, until end of July 2021, a widening of 5 billion dinars (57%), the National Institute of Statistics (INS) announced Monday, August 15, 2022.
The results of the institute show that the deficit in the trade balance excluding energy went down to 8.8 billion dinars, i.e. the deficit in the energy balance is 4.9 billion dinars, or 36% of the total deficit, against 2.3 billion during the seven months of 2021.
Consequently, the coverage rate has lost 4.8 points compared to the same period last year to 70.4%.
Indeed, exports posted a rise of 23.1% at the end of last July, to 32.5 billion dinars, from 26.4 billion during the same period of the year 2021. The increase involved several sectors, namely those of energy (+60.2%), mining, phosphates and derivatives (+69.4%), food industries (+29.6%), textiles, clothing and leather (+21.6%) and mechanical and electrical industries (+13.3%).
Similarly, imports increased by 31.6% to 46.2 billion dinars, against 35.1 billion as of July 31, 2021. This growth is due to the increase in imports of energy (+89.7), raw materials and semi-finished products (+35.7%), consumer goods (+13.4%) and capital goods (+7.6%).
In addition, the trade deficit remains largely explained by the deficit recorded with some countries, such as China (4,937 million dinars), Turkey (2,835 MD), Algeria (1,557 MD) and Russia (1,353 MD).
On the other hand, the balance of trade in goods recorded a surplus with other countries mainly with France (2.349 MD), Germany (1.799 MD) and Libya (945 MD).
