Tunisia’s National Organization of Entrepreneurs (ONE) on Thursday called on the government to come to the aid of SMEs, the majority of which face great risks, including the difficulty of obtaining bank financing necessary for their survival.
The ONE pointed out in a press release that several provisions of the new 2023 finance law “will be likely to further aggravate the tax burden for both Tunisians and businesses”.
She thus criticizes the absence of measures favoring the investment climate in the country and considers incomprehensible the decision to devote around a third of the budget to salaries, while another third will be devoted to repaying the public debt.
On the other hand, investment expenditure constitutes only 6.7% of the budget, which “proves the absence of a certain vision in terms of resuscitating the country’s business climate”.
The ONE also wants a dialogue bringing together government, economic operators, social partners, national organizations and civil society “in order to hope to arrive at proposals that must be combined into concrete and rapid solutions”.
Since the 2011 revolution, Tunisia has sunk into economic difficulties, aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic, with sluggish growth and very high unemployment. Suffocated by a debt exceeding 100% of GDP, Tunisia obtained in mid-October an agreement in principle from the IMF for a new loan of almost 2 billion dollars disbursable in installments from December.
In return, the government has committed to reforms, including a gradual lifting of state subsidies for basic products (food and energy) and a restructuring of public enterprises which have a monopoly in many sectors.