Tunisia
On October 7th, the High Independent Commission overseeing the Tunisian election (ISIE) reconfirmed Kais Saied as president with over 89,2% of votes cast. The landslide victory follows a tightly-controlled competition, with over 17 presidential hopefuls excluded from the race in favour of three candidates only – incumbent Kais Saied, his long-time supporter Zouhair Zaghmaoui (3,9%) and Ayachi Zammel from the Azimoun party (6,9%). Zammel, kept under custody during the elections, was sentenced shortly afterwards to a twelve-year reclusion for electoral fraud.
Upon this backdrop, participation rates plummeted to an all-time low, with over 70% of voters abstaining from the ballot. By contrast, Saied’s first presidential bid in 2019 had won him 72% of votes with a 55% participation rate. According to estimates, seven million Tunisians (over almost ten million registered voters) did not cast their vote. After five years of growing authoritarianism and at the start of his second term, Saied’s consensus seems markedly weaker.
As he takes the helm a second time around, Saied must face the task of narrowing Tunisia’s gaping deficit while simultaneously containing strong inflationary pressures. As deteriorating economic conditions make it ever harder to secure foreign financing – and as the long-running negotiations over an IMF loan seem to have reached a final dead end – Saied is turning to domestic contributors to prop up Tunisia’s fiscal balance. Tellingly, the 2025 draft budget law features tax hikes for enterprises and private contributors, while domestic debt doubled to almost 8 billion dollars against 2 billion in foreign debt.
Meanwhile, the Tunisian Parliament is debating a law proposal that would limit Central Bank control over exchange and interest rates. If approved, the law would allow the Tunisian Central Bank (CBT) to only set interest rates after consulting the government. The move has been backed by Saied, according to whom the Bank should not act as “a state within a state”. The president, who already amended legislation to secure direct funding from the Bank, likely aims to force the CBT to lower interest rates and attract financing to plug Tunisia’s 38-billion-dollar deficit. The CBT, however, had so far kept rates stable at 8% to keep inflation in check.
Energy cooperation between Tunisia and Italy continues apace. The Tunisian secretary of State, Ouael Chouchene, announced on the sidelines of the Cairo Sustainable Energy Week that work on the Elmed undersea cable will begin in 2025, to be concluded by 2028. Developed through partnership between Italian and Tunisian utilities Terna and Steg, the 600-MW, 200-km cable will connect Tunisia to Sicily and favour energy integration between Europe and North Africa. The 850-million-euro project is also financed by loans from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and from the World Bank.
Download the October 2024 report
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| Head of state | Kais Saied |
| Head of Government | Ahmed Hachani |
| Institutional Form | Unitary presidential republic |
| Capital | Tunis |
| Legislative Power | Assembly of the Representatives of the People (217 Members), temporarily suspended |
| Judicial Power | Court of Cassation (composed of First President, House of Presidents and Magistrates; it’s organised into 27 civil and 11 Penal Houses) |
| Ambassador to Italy | Mourad Bourelha |
| Total Area kmq | 163.610 km2 |
| Land | 155.360 km2 |
| Weather | Temperate in the north with mild, rainy winters and hot, dry summers; desert in the south |
| Natural resources | Petroleum, phosphates, iron ore, lead, zinc and salt |
| Economic summary | Its economy particularly suffered from the global financial crisis of 2008, helping to start the Jasmine Revolution in 2010-2011, which led to popular protests, uprisings and a regime change. Despite the establish of a democratic system, the social and economic expectations of Tunisian people remain unmet, generating a lot of protests between 2019 and 2020. The social and political context has been aggravated by the pandemic of Covid-19, and this led the President to announce a temporary suspension of Parliament. |
| GDP | € 46.5 billion (2023) |
| Pro-capite GDP (Purchasing power parity) | $2889 (Dec. 2021) |
| Exports | € 18.2 billion (2023) |
| Export partner | France 29.4%, Italy 17.2%, Germany 14.2%, United States 4.12% (2020) Imports: $16.5 billion (2020) |
| Imports | € 23.2 billion (2023) |
| Import partner | France 17.6%, Italy 16.5%, Germany 8.54%, China 8.67%, Türkiye 5.57% (2020) |
| Trade With Italy | € 6,865 billion (2023) |
| Population | 11.896.972 (2022) |
| Population Growth | 0,69% (2022 est.) |
| Ethnicities | Arabs 98%, Europeans 1%, Jews and others 1% |
| Languages | Arabic (official, one of the languages of trade), French (trade), Berber (Tamazight) |
| Religions | Islamic (official, Sunni) 99.1%, other (includes Christians, Jews, Shia Muslims and Baha'i) <1% |
| Urbanization | 70,2% (2022) |
| Literacy | 81.8% (2020) |
Independent since 1956, the Tunisian Republic overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and borders with Algeria to the west and Libya to the southeast. Most of the 11.8-million population is Arab. There are, however, Imaziɣen and European minorities. The country’s official language is Arabic, but French is widely spoken.
Lacking major oil resources, over the years Tunisia has developed a market-oriented economy and an interesting manufacturing industry, which make it a success story in Africa and the Arab world.
Italy has always seen Tunisia as a natural production platform for companies willing to diversify their activities and penetrate new markets in the Maghreb and, more generally, Africa. The country’s appeal stems from factors including geographical proximity to important markets, the availability of skilled labour and the presence of competitive high-added-value production chains such as automotive, textile and garments, aerospace, plastics, renewable energy, information technology and telecommunications. With a total trade of $ 6,47 billion (2021), Italy is Tunisia’s second trade partner. With a positive balance, Italy is the second largest exporter to Tunisia and the second largest importer from it, with a total market share of 14 percent as of October 2020. Italy’s economic presence in Tunisia is large, solid and dynamic, with around 800 companies employing over 68,000 people. Italian companies represent one third of the companies with foreign participation in the country. Most of these are concentrated in Greater Tunis and the coastal regions and operate in major manufacturing sectors, including textile and garment, energy, construction, automotive components, banking, transport, mechanical, electrical, pharmaceutical, tourism and agri-food.
