Resumen de Economics Will Be the Test of Tunisian Exceptionalism
The challenges Tunisia has faced over the past four years have not gone away. Economic conditions have deteriorated. Getting the country back to work, rebuilding the trust of the private sector, ensuring that public investment is actually made, will be the acid test of whether Tunisia can double its growth rate to 5-6% over the next few years.
All the political nous the key actors in the presidency and government can muster will be required if desperately needed jobs are to be created.
Failure would spell social and political strife and an eventual rescheduling of foreign debt would impose its own cold logic.
The private sector accounts for a paltry 20% of total investment. Half of the budgeted public sector investment has not been made since 2011.
Growth has been fuelled by private consumption, sucking in imports and not investment.
An estimated 40% of the budget outside investment is accounted for by civil service salaries, the Islamists having left the poisoned chalice of tens of thousands of unqualified Tunisians recruited to an already bloated civil service.
Tunisia needs an estimated $5-6bn in aid and loans annually over the next three years and foreign donors appear well disposed.
The pattern of voting underlines the chasm between two Tunisias – a dangerous divide through social classes which pits the elites of the coast against part of the south and west.
The massive abstention of younger people means that the new prime minister will have to inspire and lead, not just manage the government in technocratic fashion.
North Africa’s smallest country had witnessed a change in the regime but not a change of regime. Thousands of educated Tunisians have come home to build what they wish will be a beacon of hope in North Africa.
The army has played a key role in helping maintain the peace during the past four turbulent years. Paradoxically, the army enjoys more power today than it did before 2011.
International aid should be conditioned, to a degree, on the next government enacting a long term energy policy worthy of what the sector could contribute to Tunisia’s economic recovery.
