Coronavirus: World Bank grants Tunisia financial support of US$ 175 million

15 Juin 2020

Tunis, Tunisia, June 15 (Infosplusgabon) - The World Bank has approved budget support of US$ 175 million to help Tunisia cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).

The agreement for this support, allocated under the Emergency Operation and in support of development policies for resilience and recovery, was signed on Monday.

The financing is part of a major coordinated international support program to help Tunisia manage the coronavirus crisis, to which contributions have come from the World Bank, German bank KfW, French Development Agency (AFD), the Japanese Agency for International Cooperation (JICA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB).

It has also been closely coordinated with macro-financial assistance provided by the European Union.

The financial package for the joint operation will amount to between US$ 600 million and US$ 700 million in 2020.

“This crisis poses a considerable challenge to Tunisia, but it also offers it the opportunity to redefine its position in the world economy by creating more favorable conditions for investment and job creation in the private sector," says Ferid Belhaj, the World Bank vice president for the Middle East and North Africa.

According to him, “countries that implement difficult reforms manage to stimulate their economic growth and accelerate their recovery. If its leaders are resolute, Tunisia is fully capable of undertaking these reforms."

The objective of this international support is to help Tunisia protect vulnerable businesses and households from the effects of the COVID-19 crisis and to carry out essential economic reforms to enable Tunisia to improve its recovery potential after the crisis, as well as its competitiveness in a context that is leading countries to rethink global value and distribution chains.

"This is unprecedented budgetary support which required, on the part of our ministry, several months of coordination between the partners," indicates Selim Azzabi, the Tunisian Minister for Development, Investment and International Cooperation.

The reforms provided for in this program represent an investment in the future: they aim to strengthen social cohesion between generations and between regions, to improve the business climate, in particular with regard to digitization and interoperability, and to promote good governance of public enterprises.

The World Bank's contribution to joint budget support will focus on three interdependent areas of the Tunisian government's reform program, namely: accelerating social protection and financial inclusion reforms, promoting the recovery of the private sector by modernizing port operations and by mobilizing private funding for the production of renewable energy and improving the transparency and performance of public enterprises.

FIN/ INFOSPLUSGABON/GBJ/GABON2020

© Copyright  Infosplusgabon