About 20 Tunisian businesses set up after TABC Africa prospection missions

Some 20 Tunisian businesses were set up after a string of prospecting missions conducted by the Tunisia-Africa Business Council (TABC), said President Bassem Loukil. The newly established companies are operating in the sectors of health (private clinics), building, agriculture and new technologies, TAP reports. Several partnership agreements and commercial contracts were signed in 2017 by Tunisian and African operators, Loukil Thursday said on the fringes of a lunch meeting under the theme “Retrospective Look at 2017, Action Plan for 2018.” “We had very positive feedback from the Tunisian Foreign Trade…

Strong growth in civil service hiring was associated with 10% decline in productivity (IMF Report)

“The increase in civil service hiring and the excessively high salaries have been followed by a 10% decline in the sector’s productivity between 2010 and 2015,” said a report recently prepared by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the Public Wage Bills in the Middle East and Central Asia. “This has had negative spillovers to the private sector, especially as graduates tend to continue to prefer a career in the civil service over a job in the private sector,” the report pointed out. On Tunisia, the report estimates that “the…

Mixed Chambers of commerce call for fiscal stability

The members of the Mixed Chambers Council attended, on Tuesday, January 9, 2018, a breakfast debate on the main provisions of the new Finance Act 2018 with attendance of Minister of Finance Ridha Chalghoum and his team within the Ministry. Taking the floor, the Finance Minister emphasised the importance of the stability of the fiscal framework and legal regulation. He highlighted the support mechanisms provided by the 2018 Finance Law to promote Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs), the key business companies in the Tunisian economy, as well as the measures…

Why Tunisia Is the One Lasting Success of the Arab Spring

The Iranian political demonstrations now under way have roots in the Arab Spring upheavals that began in December 2010 in North Africa. The starting point was Tunisia, the rare success story of the Arab Spring—despite two major terrorist attacks in 2015 and this week’s protests against austerity, the country has in recent years enjoyed the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of political disputes. By contrast, other Arab Spring upheavals fizzled out (as in Bahrain), produced humanitarian disasters (as in Syria), or ended up in a return to undemocratic…

Tunisian module manufacturer Ifri-Sol commissions new solar factory

The new 150 MW solar module manufacturing facility will be located in Kairouan and will enable the company to reach a total production capacity of 200 MW Tunisian solar module manufacturer, Ifri-Sol has commissioned its second manufacturing facility, in Kairouan, in northern Tunisia’s inland desert. In a statement to pv magazine, the company said the new factory, which has a capacity of 150 MW, will produce both mono- and multi-crystalline modules. The facility will rely on an undisclosed German technology for the production equipment and will assemble modules with solar cells…