The results of the economic situation have been worse than expected this year (April, May and June), as the Central Bank a few days ago predicted that the economic recession would be within the 12% maximum limit for this second quarter, and that was about double the rate recorded.
We can see straight away that this Tunisian recession has one of the highest rates recorded in the world, because the European recession was around 12% and the highest rate was the last reached in Great Britain at 20.4%, whereas this percentage did not exceed 10% in a country such as Germany.
In Tunisia, all sectors declined sharply with the exception of agriculture and fishing, which experienced positive growth of 3.6%.
Manufacturing industry declined by 27% and traded services (tourism, transport, communications) by 30.4%.
Even if we were all expecting a significant recession in the second quarter, this record of The Benchmark Index indicates a dangerous observation: the recession of the Tunisian economy throughout 2020 could exceed 10% as long as we reach 11.9% in recession rate during this first half of the year and as long as all the elements of the growth decline are available to continue during the rest of this year.
Someone might say that we are faced with simple figures and accounts that perhaps mean nothing tangible in people’s lives, but the opposite is absolutely true, because the first result of this recession in just three months’ time will be a fall in the number of workers by 161 000, while the number of unemployed will increase by around 114 000 new unemployed. The jobless rate rose to 18% in this second quarter.
This means that the first wave of the social tsunami has taken place. All the decisions and measures taken by the government to deal with the social impact of the health crisis have not been effective enough to prevent this rapid flow of unemployment and the marginalization of large sections of society … knowing that further waves are ahead of us, which may cause the loss of jobs.
Source: Tuniscope
