Tunisia: Economy to Grow by 2.9% in 2018, 3.5% in 2019

The Tunisian government expects the economy to grow by 2.9% in 2018 and by 3.5% in 2019.

In an interview with Reuters News Agency, Minister of Reforms Taoufik Rajhi said the government planned to reduce the budget deficit to 3.9 percent next year from the 4.9 percent forecast for 2018.

According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INS), Tunisia’s economy grew 2.6 percent in the first half of this year, compared to 1.9 percent in the same period of 2017.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) also grew 2.8 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2018 compared to the same period last year, according to the latest statistics from INS.

The tourism sector has begun to recover three years after two militant attacks that killed scores of foreign holidaymakers, mostly Britons.

Some 5.15 million tourists visited Tunisia from January to August, posting a 17.5% increase compared to the same period in 2017. Tunisia expects to receive eight million tourists for the first time in 2018, officials have said.

Earlier this year, Marie-Francoise Marie Nelly, the World Bank Country Director for the Maghreb and Malta, predicted that Tunisia’s economy would grow by 2.5 per cent in 2018.

As a reminder, Tunisia ranked sixth in the Arab world and 88 out of 190 economies in the world, according to the 2018 Doing Business report.