Revenues from domestic exports fell 2.9% to 9,443.8 million Tunisian dinars (MTD), at the end of April 2016, from 9,726.7 MTD in the same period in 2015, Director General of the National Statistics Institute (INS) Hedi Saidi said Tuesday in Tunis .
Speaking at a press conference to present the indicators of Tunisia ’s external trade, the official noted that imports rose by 1.4% to 13,448.9 MTD against 13,309.0 MTD in the same period in 2015.
This increase has brought about a rise in the trade deficit to 4,045.1 MTD from 3,582.3 MTD in the same period in 2015.
Saidi said the decrease recorded in export is due to the decline in the export of agricultural and food products as well as the fall in olive export but also to lower exports of energy and refined products.
He also noted that trade has recorded a surplus with several countries mainly France with a value of 9,998.4 MTD and Germany (34.6 MTD).
Saidi underlined that the results of the national survey on population and employment in Q1 2016 showed that the unemployment rate has reached 15.4%, i.e. 622.7 thousand jobless from the total labour force (the same rate recorded in the third survey of Q4 2015).
The unemployment rate among women is twice men’s.
