Economy Tunisia’s trade deficit jumps to $5.3bn in eight months of 2022 By Reuters September 13, 2022 Reuters/Jihed Abidellaoui A customer shops as he stands near a sign reading 'Please, 2 cartons of milk max' inside a grocery store in Tunis on September 6, 2022. Tunisia’s balance of trade was in deficit by TND 16.9 billion ($5.32 billion) in the first eight months of 2022, an increase of 61 percent from a year earlier, mainly because of high energy prices, the state Institute of Statistics (INS) said on Monday. The trade deficit was TND 10.48 billion in the same period of 2021, INS figures showed. The energy balance deficit doubled to TND 6 billion this year compared to TND 2.9 billion last year, driven by the impact of the war in Ukraine. The country’s annual inflation jumped to 8.6 percent in August 2022 from 8.2 percent in July 2022, said the National Statistics Institute. In May, Tunisia’s central bank raised its key interest rate by 75 basis points to seven percent to tame inflation.
