FALCON POWERS – On Tuesday, Tunisian Finance Minister Sihem Boughdiri Nemsia announced that Tunisia had repaid 11.6 billion dinars ($3.7 billion) in outstanding foreign loans during the first half of the current year.
This came in statements by the Finance Minister during a session of the Tunisian Parliament to approve the financing agreement signed on May 16 between Tunisia and a group of local banks to finance the state budget, according to a statement by the House of Representatives.
The value of the pooled financial loan from local banks is 156 million euros ($173 million), and another loan of $16 million. Nemsia said that “the Tunisian Republic has fulfilled its commitments to repay foreign loans… We have repaid 11.6 billion dinars ($3.7 billion) by the end of last June.”
According to previous statistics from the Ministry of Finance, Tunisia is required to repay 24.7 billion dinars ($7.96 billion) during the current year.
She explained that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 0.2% during the first quarter of the current year, on an annual basis.
Tunisia has suffered a severe economic crisis exacerbated by the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, then the rise in the cost of importing energy and basic commodities, following the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war in late February 2022.
