Social and economic Development

Tunisia has set for itself the ambition of achieving a high level of economic growth while pursuing human and social development. Endowed with only limited natural resources, the country has relied on its human potential and sustained social action programs.

Based on a permanent search for a balance between the social and economic dimensions of development, this approach has made it possible for the country to achieve a sound economic performance and continued social progress.

The economy's liberalization, accelerated diversification and openness on the outside world have contributed to making of Tunisia an emerging country, aspiring to join the ranks of developed nations. With a regularly positive economic growth (an average of 5% during the past 16 years), far exceeding the demographic growth (1.09%), its dynamic and largely export-oriented industrial sector (the foreign commerce growth rate reached 15% in 2001, and exports account for 42% of GDP), a per capita income exceeding 3,000 Tunisian Dinars, and a modern infrastructure comparable to that of a number of European countries, Tunisia has all the requisite assets to translate its ambitions into concrete reality.

Those achievements were possible despite a difficult regional and international environment. They are, according to a recent IMF report, "the fruits of well-coordinated macro-economic, structural and social policies." Seeking to take advantage from globalization as an opportunity to further develop its economy and to reinforce its competitive capacity, Tunisia has launched a comprehensive program for the upgrading of its enterprises which, by the year 2010, will have to cope with the European enterprises' competition, as part of the EU-Tunisian free trade zone provided for in the Association Agreement signed in 1995. That year, the European Union, for the first time in its history, concluded an Association Agreement with a Southern Mediterranean country. The strength of the Tunisian economy, the positive growth prospects, the competitiveness of the industrial sector and the country's sound political and social governance, have convinced the European Union to make of Tunisia a close partner. More than 2500 European, American and Asian enterprises have been established in Tunisia , often in partnership with Tunisian businesses.

Despite the fall of the volume of direct foreign investments all over the world, Tunisia has continued to attract an increasing number of direct foreign investments (1.2 billion dinars in 2002, against 448 million dinars in 1999). This, in fact, bears testimony to Tunisia 's attractive assets and to the trust placed in it by foreign business, as proven by the regularly positive appreciations made by international rating institutions.

One of the economic development characteristics in Tunisia lies in the fact that the growth achieved has been beneficial to enterprises and above all to citizens. Thanks to its vigorous policy of national solidarity and the state's substantial social transfers (expenses concerning the social dimension represent an average of more than 50% of the state budget), Tunisia has managed to significantly improve its population's living standard: the middle class has expanded, accounting for nearly 80% of the population; life expectancy verges on 80 years; 80% of Tunisian families own their houses; practically all six-year-olds go to school (schooling being compulsory and free of charge); poverty, which affected 12% of the people in the 1980s, has been brought down to 4%, thanks to the continuous action of public authorities and of the people who have massively contributed to the National Solidarity Fund established in 1992 by President Ben Ali in order to promote disadvantaged areas and combat exclusion.

The success achieved by this pioneering experience of development was crowned, in December 2002, by the adoption by the UN General Assembly of a resolution to create a World Solidarity Fund to fight poverty, based on the experience of Tunisia 's National Solidarity Fund.