The Tunisian head of state is creating a new breed of entrepreneur. A new caste of the rich, made richer by other people’s money. The latest reshuffle has seen the creation of the post of Secretary of State for Communitarian Enterprises, and declarations and measures follow one another to give them the means to flourish. And nothing is too good for communitarian enterprises; all that’s missing is tax exemption!
What is a communitarian enterprise?
This new form of business in Tunisia, introduced by Decree 15 of 2022, is “based on collective initiative and social benefit”, according to the text, which specifies that it is a legal entity created by a group of individuals from among the inhabitants of the region, and whose “creation aims to achieve social justice and a fair distribution of wealth through the collective exercise of economic activity from the territorial area in which it is based”.
A communitarian enterprise, in the capital of which each investor can hold only one share and one vote, regardless of the size of his or her capital contribution, is an undivided joint property. With a minimum of 50 shareholders who must be registered on the municipal electoral lists, it is either local, with a minimum capital of TND 10,000, or regional, with a minimum capital of TND 20,000, and its shareholders must be apolitical and never have recourse to donations. Distributable profits are the leftovers from operations.
Registration with the national business register (French: RNE) is compulsory, as is an audit of the accounts by a statutory auditor, who must report any irregularities in the accounts to the public prosecutor, although he is also bound by professional secrecy.
It is also important to note that any commercial company that has passed the law 95 on companies in difficulty can also become a communitarian company. In this case, it must open its capital to any other participant, as described in the decree for the founders of each communitarian company! Communitarian enterprises are also directly supervised, first by the regional governor and then by the Ministry of the Economy and Planning.
Unprecedented privileges for the new rich caste
According to the Ministry of Employment, 85 communitarian companies have registered with the RNE, of which 68 are regional and only one local.
According to Article 92 of the decree, communitarian companies are exempt from all taxes imposed by current tax legislation for 10 years from the date of their creation. However, it would only take 2/3 of the shareholders to dissolve a communitarian enterprise or for it to lose ¾ of its capital. And this could happen before 10 years had elapsed, and the same people could participate in a new communitarian enterprise. And the temptation to do what the SIVPs did cannot be ruled out, especially as the law does not directly mention it!
In mid-September 2024, the Secretary of State to the Minister of Employment and Training, issued a press release, specifically addressed to communitarian enterprises, both regional and local, exempting them from the obligation to submit any environmental impact assessment, a document necessary for the developer, whoever it may be, to obtain the investment declaration from the APII.
Another privilege, and by no means the least, in addition to the use of state land, probably free of charge, is the monthly bonus of TND 800 announced in September 2024 by Hasna Jiballah, Secretary of state for Communitarian Enterprises. The latter recently stressed “the need to study local and regional communitarian enterprise projects in promising technological sectors with operational capacity and high added value.”
She assured that “all state structures are called upon to overcome the difficulties and obstacles faced by those behind this new path and this national program, and stated that the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training will shortly announce the opening of registrations for Communitarian enterprises to benefit from a monthly subsidy aimed at supporting and further promoting the process of creating local and regional communitarian enterprises.”
According to information obtained by Africanmanager from the Communitarian Enterprises Unit, the monthly grant of DT 800 will not be paid to the shareholders of the communitarian enterprises, but into the current accounts of the businesses themselves, as a sort of working capital.
The latest privilege so far is the decision by BTS, a Tunisian solidarity bank created by ‘forced’ citizen participation during the Ben Ali era, and therefore a company that makes a public appeal for savings and whose balance sheet is rarely published on the CMF or BVMT websites, to grant loans WITHOUT GUARANTEE. Mohamed Mohamed DC of BTS confirmed this to Africanmanager and even specified that these loans can reach up to 300,000 DT (Ar).
Unsecured, interest-free loans. But for everyone!
Following the revision of the Commercial Code last July, initially to address the issue of bounced cheques, all Tunisian banks are now required to set aside 8% of their annual profits. The amount, estimated at 100 million Tunisian dinars per year, must be used in full for loans to SMEs.
But the loans will be WITHOUT INTEREST and WITHOUT GUARANTEE. So if you’re an SME, just ask for the money and it will be given to you. These 0% loans will also benefit local communitarian enterprises, as each bank will have to pay 8% of its profits each year into a special funding line for local communitarian enterprises, in accordance with Article 32 of the 2024 Finance Act, which created this special funding line for local communities.
Some bankers are in jail for lack of guarantees!
The fact that the current government wants to create a new caste of rich people on the backs of others, mainly the banks, and to compete with existing companies that pay all kinds of taxes, is understandable and even justifiable in a socialist economy. But it must be fair.
How can we explain the fact that certain bank executives have been thrown in prison for several months, apparently without trial (because there is no official information about them), for having granted loans WITHOUT GUARANTEE?
How can we also explain the fact that some companies take out loans WITHOUT INTEREST, and therefore cheaper than those that will soon be their direct competitors, sometimes with double-digit ARR, which will have lower costs and therefore sell more cheaply?
This raises the central question of who, under a different political regime, will save these bankers from a justice system that may one day catch up with them, as it has recently caught up with others?
