Mango Chutney
Well-known member
Reading this tells me bezness will become increasingly worse and more desperate. People need lock their wallets, stop marrying internet strangers and start reading up....for their own protection.
Infuriates me when our countries have their own unemployment, poverty and homeless issues.
With dim economic prospects, Tunisia ‘dancing on volcano’
Francis Ghiles
Tunisia at least gives the lie to the idea that free elections ensure wiser economic policy and more jobs.
Tuesday 20/10/2020
A Tunisian man retrieves bank notes from an ATM in the capital Tunis. (AFP)
The North African country is continuing the downward economic slide it has been on since 2011 while its democratic credentials look more threadbare every day. What is the point of democracy, wonder an increasing number of young Tunisians, if jobs are increasingly scarce, corruption rampant and politics reduced to a a puppet show?
The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts for Tunisia are not encouraging. They predict that economic growth, with the exception of next year, will remain below 3% until 2025. In the words of the cautious economist Hachemi Alaya, in his latest EcoWeek analysis of the country’s economy, “Tunisia is dancing on a volcano whose date of eruption is difficult to foretell.”
That many young Tunisians regret what they see as the economic halcyon days of former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule should not come as a surprise.
This year’s Arab Youth Survey found that 27% of 18-24 year-olds across the Arab World have considered emigrating and 15% were actively trying to do so.
More than half of Tunisian respondents believe protests could take place over the next year: 40% blame corruption (notably among MPs) and 29% the absence of new jobs for wanting to leave.
Unemployment reached 19.4% during the second quarter of the year. Joblessness is far higher among younger people and in the poorer hinterland, which revolted in 2011 and has seen its standard of living decline ever since.
At the same time, investment as a percentage of GDP reached a historic low of 16.4% last year and is forecast to drop to just over 10% in 2020. GDP fell below $40bn in 2018, compared with $46bn on the eve of the revolution, which has ushered in a collapse in investment and new jobs and an explosion in public debt – up from 78% in 2018 to 85% this year, according to recent IMF estimates.
This “long and dangerous regression,” according to Ayala, is all the more worrying because the statistics do not take account of the full economic fallout of the pandemic which had skirted Tunisia until the summer. A double dip recession in Europe, with whom Tunisia conducts most of its trade, could increase the economic pain. The rating agency Moody recently downgraded Tunisia from B2 stable to B2 negative.
The recently released IMF Annual Report makes for sober reading. “While the global economy is coming back,” it writes,” the ascent will likely be long, uneven and uncertain.” These words were written before the second wave of COVID-19 hit Europe, suggesting a more pessimistic outlook is likely. The IMF believes global growth “is expected to gradually slow to 3.5% in the medium term. This implies only limited progress towards catching up to the path of economic activity for 2020-2025 projected before the pandemic broke for advanced and emerging markets and developing economies.”
The IMF forecasts that Tunisia’s economy will decline by 7% this year and rebound by 4% next year and a modest 3% in the following years. The IMF and the World Bank seem to have moved away from the Washington consensus and towards a more Keynesian form of economic policies in the wake of the pandemic, which is hardly surprising. Leaving everything to the markets and reigning in the state is not an option at present.
Whatever the IMF recommends to Tunisia in coming months, its past recommendations have not been heard so far. The debt has mushroomed because of the huge rise in civil servants and workers in parastatals. Tunisia has not become an economically freer country, rather the reverse.
The vested interests of existing private companies and the main trade union UGTT hold governments in a vice-like grip, making reforms impossible. Democratic elections have not brought in any political leaders of weight or courage. The reverse is true. Whoever governs Tunisia has no room for manoeuvre whatsoever, hence the earlier reference to a volcano: The street might well be tempted to take matters in its hands in the coming months.
Qualified Tunisians, meanwhile, flee the country, from highly-skilled doctors to plumbers. The old and less old are voting with their feet whenever they have the opportunity to do so. No policy could easily ensure that the average Tunisian enjoys a higher living standard and better job prospects in 2025 than today. Having a comfortable level of hard currency reserves is a minor blessing for the country as is the low rate of inflation. But if more and more people simply cannot afford basic foodstuffs, such statistics are meaningless.
Tunisia at least gives the lie to the idea that free elections ensure wiser economic policy and more jobs. During the past decade, the country has been so often lauded in seminars across the West as the “only democracy in the Arab world.” So much for that.
It is not beyond belief today that a worsening economic and social crisis could spell the end of the way “democracy” is practised in Tunisia. The very word “democracy” cannot describe the mixture of kleptocracy, weakening of what was once a proud civil service and shameless political posturing among parties that passes for “the only democracy in the Arab world.”
thearabweekly.com
Infuriates me when our countries have their own unemployment, poverty and homeless issues.
With dim economic prospects, Tunisia ‘dancing on volcano’
Francis Ghiles
Tunisia at least gives the lie to the idea that free elections ensure wiser economic policy and more jobs.
Tuesday 20/10/2020
A Tunisian man retrieves bank notes from an ATM in the capital Tunis. (AFP)
The North African country is continuing the downward economic slide it has been on since 2011 while its democratic credentials look more threadbare every day. What is the point of democracy, wonder an increasing number of young Tunisians, if jobs are increasingly scarce, corruption rampant and politics reduced to a a puppet show?
The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts for Tunisia are not encouraging. They predict that economic growth, with the exception of next year, will remain below 3% until 2025. In the words of the cautious economist Hachemi Alaya, in his latest EcoWeek analysis of the country’s economy, “Tunisia is dancing on a volcano whose date of eruption is difficult to foretell.”
That many young Tunisians regret what they see as the economic halcyon days of former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali’s authoritarian rule should not come as a surprise.
This year’s Arab Youth Survey found that 27% of 18-24 year-olds across the Arab World have considered emigrating and 15% were actively trying to do so.
More than half of Tunisian respondents believe protests could take place over the next year: 40% blame corruption (notably among MPs) and 29% the absence of new jobs for wanting to leave.
Unemployment reached 19.4% during the second quarter of the year. Joblessness is far higher among younger people and in the poorer hinterland, which revolted in 2011 and has seen its standard of living decline ever since.
At the same time, investment as a percentage of GDP reached a historic low of 16.4% last year and is forecast to drop to just over 10% in 2020. GDP fell below $40bn in 2018, compared with $46bn on the eve of the revolution, which has ushered in a collapse in investment and new jobs and an explosion in public debt – up from 78% in 2018 to 85% this year, according to recent IMF estimates.
This “long and dangerous regression,” according to Ayala, is all the more worrying because the statistics do not take account of the full economic fallout of the pandemic which had skirted Tunisia until the summer. A double dip recession in Europe, with whom Tunisia conducts most of its trade, could increase the economic pain. The rating agency Moody recently downgraded Tunisia from B2 stable to B2 negative.
The recently released IMF Annual Report makes for sober reading. “While the global economy is coming back,” it writes,” the ascent will likely be long, uneven and uncertain.” These words were written before the second wave of COVID-19 hit Europe, suggesting a more pessimistic outlook is likely. The IMF believes global growth “is expected to gradually slow to 3.5% in the medium term. This implies only limited progress towards catching up to the path of economic activity for 2020-2025 projected before the pandemic broke for advanced and emerging markets and developing economies.”
The IMF forecasts that Tunisia’s economy will decline by 7% this year and rebound by 4% next year and a modest 3% in the following years. The IMF and the World Bank seem to have moved away from the Washington consensus and towards a more Keynesian form of economic policies in the wake of the pandemic, which is hardly surprising. Leaving everything to the markets and reigning in the state is not an option at present.
Whatever the IMF recommends to Tunisia in coming months, its past recommendations have not been heard so far. The debt has mushroomed because of the huge rise in civil servants and workers in parastatals. Tunisia has not become an economically freer country, rather the reverse.
The vested interests of existing private companies and the main trade union UGTT hold governments in a vice-like grip, making reforms impossible. Democratic elections have not brought in any political leaders of weight or courage. The reverse is true. Whoever governs Tunisia has no room for manoeuvre whatsoever, hence the earlier reference to a volcano: The street might well be tempted to take matters in its hands in the coming months.
Qualified Tunisians, meanwhile, flee the country, from highly-skilled doctors to plumbers. The old and less old are voting with their feet whenever they have the opportunity to do so. No policy could easily ensure that the average Tunisian enjoys a higher living standard and better job prospects in 2025 than today. Having a comfortable level of hard currency reserves is a minor blessing for the country as is the low rate of inflation. But if more and more people simply cannot afford basic foodstuffs, such statistics are meaningless.
Tunisia at least gives the lie to the idea that free elections ensure wiser economic policy and more jobs. During the past decade, the country has been so often lauded in seminars across the West as the “only democracy in the Arab world.” So much for that.
It is not beyond belief today that a worsening economic and social crisis could spell the end of the way “democracy” is practised in Tunisia. The very word “democracy” cannot describe the mixture of kleptocracy, weakening of what was once a proud civil service and shameless political posturing among parties that passes for “the only democracy in the Arab world.”
With dim economic prospects, Tunisia ‘dancing on volcano’ | Francis Ghiles | AW
As the pandemic wrecks economies across the world, Arab countries are being very hard hit. Some countries, such as Lebanon or Tunisia, look particularly vulnerable for reasons of their own .
Link please
![Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi in Tunis, Tunisia on 3 September 2020 [Nacer Talel/Anadolu Agency]](https://i2.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/20200903_2_44181195_57875860.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1 "Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi in Tunis, Tunisia on 3 September 2020 [Nacer Talel/Anadolu Agency]")
