Tunisia has completed the necessary steps to obtain a loan of 50 million euros (M€) from the Italian government, or approximately 170 million Tunisian dinars (MDT) to finance the 2024 state budget.
This was reported by the Tap news agency, specifying that the agreement, signed on April 17, 2024, was published as presidential decree No. 455 in the Official Journal of the Tunisian Republic (Jort) No. 100 of 2024.
Tunisia plans to mobilize funds from various sources to finance the 2024 state budget, including $38 million from the Arab Monetary Fund and $400 million from the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Within the framework of bilateral cooperation, Tunisia is also seeking to obtain 300 million dollars from Algeria and 500 million dollars from Saudi Arabia.
On 4 March, the European Union (EU) announced the allocation of €150 million in budget support, equivalent to approximately 506 million dinars. This contribution will take the form of a direct financial transfer from the EU to the Tunisian Treasury in the form of a grant.
Domestically, the Tunis government has managed to mobilize foreign currency resources on the local market. An agreement with several banks has raised 156 million euros and 16 million dollars to finance the 2024 state budget, which has been rising continuously since 2011, and which is largely financed by tax revenues and external and internal borrowing, while economic growth remains sluggish (0.4% in 2023 and 0.2% in the first quarter of 2024).
