The head of the powerful Tunisian trade union center, the UGTT, rejected on Thursday the reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to grant a loan to Tunisia. “We refuse these conditions (from the IMF) because of the low level of wages, the lack of means, and the increase in the rate of poverty and unemployment,” the secretary-general of the Tunisian General Labor Union told the press. (UGTT), Noureddine Taboubi.
The IMF announced in a press release on Wednesday that it was “ready to begin negotiations over the coming weeks on the establishment of a program” of aid for Tunisia conditional on the implementation of reforms. “The seriousness of the aftermath of the war in Ukraine increases the need to implement ambitious reforms without delay”, underlined Jihad Azour, the director of the Middle East and Central Asia department at the IMF, at the end of a visit in Tunisia.
“Tunisia must urgently remedy the imbalances in its public finances”
According to him, “Tunisia must urgently remedy the imbalances in its public finances by improving fiscal equity, limiting the growth of the large civil service wage bill, replacing generalized subsidies with transfers to poorer, strengthening its social safety net and reforming public enterprises that are losing money”. To justify the launch of negotiations, Mr. Azour observes that the reform program of national inspiration, as it is defended by the government, is more credible and more likely to arouse general support, and therefore presents more chances of success than in the past.
But for Mr. Taboubi, the current Tunisian government, appointed by President Kais Saied after his coup on July 25, does not have the “legitimacy” to hold discussions with the IMF on reforms. “I say it clearly, the current government has been appointed provisionally by decree. The day we have a government resulting from elections, it will have the legitimacy to open discussions on reforms”, said Mr. Taboubi. “We are for reforms, but we do not have the same vision as the current government or those who preceded it,” he added.
On Tuesday, President Saied called on the IMF, when he received Mr. Azour, to take into account the social consequences for the Tunisian population of the reforms he is calling for to be implemented in exchange for a loan.
