Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Tunisia’s currency
The IMF says the dinar needs to depreciate further, but Tunisians are feeling the
pinch and many question whether devaluation helps or harms
Fadil Aliriza
Depreciation hurt Tunisia's trade balance by 1.1bn dinars in 2016 and a further
one billion in the first half of 2017, according to Central Bank figures highlighted
in an October 2017 report by the Tunisian Observatory of Economy (OTE by its
French acronym).
"Instead of alleviating trade deficits as expected by the IMF, the depreciation of
the dinar has conversely increased it," Chafik Ben Rouine, co-founder and
president of OTE, wrote.
Ben Rouine has also documented how IMF forecasts of the value of the dinar
brought its worth down all on their own.
"Reviews after reviews, IMF constantly estimates an overvaluation of 10 percent.
This estimation was used to put more pressure on the [Central Bank of Tunisia] in
order to push it to consent to the drop of the value of the dinar," he wrote.
"When the dinar reaches the value desired by the IMF, the IMF comes up with a
new forecast through which it estimates that the dinar must drop by 10 percent
once more, and so on."
One person feeling the squeeze is Mokhtar M'Hiri. The chief financial officer at
Toupack Group, a packaging company that imports machinery and raw materials
and sells them on domestically, told MEE that his company has been forced to
triple prices in some cases as a result of the depreciation.
READ MORE►
'Tunisians are tired': Will long-awaited municipal elections make a difference?
One item that has been particularly pricey are boxes for a potato-chips
manufacturer.
"We started selling the box two years ago. It was 0.6 dinars and today it's three
times," or 1.8 dinars, he said. "So for him [the client], it's a very big part of the
cost of his product."
The IMF concedes that inflation is partly fuelled by dinar depreciation and that
Tunisians will feel the pinch.
But it has also suggested that the burden of the country's structural adjustment
programme should be shared and actions should be taken to protect the "most
vulnerable in society," including maintaining VAT exemptions and subsidies on
basic food items.
'A very important signal'
Depreciation of the currency might seem like a technical issue, but the effects are
all too real for ordinary Tunisians, whose wages aren't going up as prices increase
and the power of the dinar tumbles.
At the beginning of the year, there was a swelling of spontaneous nationwide
protests as a new budget law, authorising price increases and subsidy cuts, went
into effect.
The favourable opinion of the IMF ... it gives a very important signal to the
financial markets
- Taoufik Rajhi, state secretary of major reforms
Amid the unrest in early January, a hashtag protest movement called "Fech
Nstannew?" or "What are we waiting for?" mobilised to repeal the law.
At that time, Ben Rouine's colleague and co-founder of OTE, Jihen Chandoul,
wrote a widely shared opinion piece in the Guardian which argued that the IMF
was playing a key role in Tunisia's austerity policies that went beyond
depreciation and their effects on Tunisians.
"An escape from the submissions to the IMF, which has brought Tunisia to its
knees and strangled the economy, is a prerequisite to bring about any real
change," Chandoul wrote.