Data for the Tunisian Central Bank showed today, Thursday, that the country’s foreign exchange reserves fell to 104 days of imports, after paying $ 1.1 billion of external debt.
The Central Bank said that Tunisia’s foreign exchange reserves fell to 23.325 billion dinars (7.3 billion dollars) today, Thursday, which covers imports of 104 days, compared to 26.701 billion dinars, or what covers 119 days imports the day before.
The Tunisian parliament approved last month a law that allows the Central Bank to provide $ 2.2 billion to finance the 2025 budget to pay urgent debts, which is the second time in less than a year that the government has resorted to the bank to obtain funding.
The government’s resort to the Central Bank to borrow raised concerns about many observers about the deterioration of borrowing in foreign currency in the value of the Tunisian dinar and the escalation of the level of inflation.
Finance Minister Siham Al -Bogdiri said last month that Tunisia needs to pay a debt of 9 billion dinars in the first quarter of the year 2025, of which 5.1 billion dinars are external debts.
The minister also added last October that her country has fired loans due at a value of 11.6 billion dinars (3.7 billion dollars) of external loans during the first half of 2024.
The 2025 budget law document indicated that the volume of internal loans will double to 7.08 billion dollars from 3.57 billion dollars last year, while the volume of external loans will decrease to $ 1.98 billion in 2025 compared to 5.32 billion dollars in 2024.
Tunisia suffered a severe economic crisis, and it exacerbated the repercussions of the Corona’s pandemic, and then the cost of importing energy and basic materials increased after the outbreak of the Russian -Ukrainian war in late February 2022.
