China and Turkey imports widen Tunisia’s trade gap

• Chinese imports up 61% y-o-y
• Exports shrink by 6%
• Trade gap widens by 2bn dinars

Tunisia’s trade gap rose by two thirds in the first quarter as the government prioritised goods from China and Turkey, official figures show.

Imports increased by 5 percent to 20 billion Tunisian dinars ($6.8 billion) in the first three months of 2025 from 19 billion dinars in the same period last year, the National Institute for Statistics said.

The report, published at the weekend, showed exports shrank by 6 percent to 15 billion dinars from nearly 16 billion dinars in the same period last year.

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As a result, Tunisia’s trade balance recorded a gap of five billion dinars in the first quarter of 2025, up from three billion in 2024.

Imports from the European Union accounted for nearly 43 percent of the total, but those from China leapt by nearly 61 percent, while imports from Turkey rose 14 percent in the first quarter of this year compared to the first quarter of last year, the report showed.

“The government’s policy to increase commercial exchanges with China and Russia at the expense of other countries raise questions about its repercussions on the country’s economy, particularly in the current difficult economic circumstances,” Zuhair Al-Halawi, an economics professor at Tunis University, told the newspaper Al-Shuruq last week.