Tunis, (Business News Report)| The Tunisian Ministry of Finance denied reports saying that the Central Bank is printing money to finance the deficit budget.
Tunisian Finance Minister Siham Al-Boughdiri Nomsieh said that the news circulating about money printing was “baseless.”
Tunisians are afraid of printing money to finance the current year’s budget, as it “would cause a currency surplus and inflation crisis.”
The Minister of Finance considered that there are many inaccuracies regarding the financial aspect in Tunisia. These “include the disbursement of wages through savers’ accounts in the Tunisian Post,” she said.
In a statement, the Tunisian Post refuted this news. “The sums that are periodically transferred by the post to the public treasury, represent the income it collect,” it said.
Nomsieh said that there are financial pressures since the beginning of 2021 not only since July 25 (the date of unilateral measures by President Kais Saied).
She denied the circulating news about the unavailability of wages for the coming months, stressing that “wages are not threatened.”
The Tunisian minister spoke about the issue of closing the state budget for 2021. She noted that even “without external funding, there is the possibility of resorting to internal funding through the various available mechanisms that were previously used.”
Regarding the agreement with the International Monetary Fund, Namsieh indicated that the government submitted the initial document that was prepared for the period 2022/2026 to the Tunisian General Labor Union and theTunisian Union of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA) for study and negotiation.
Tunisia entered into technical negotiations with the IMF in mid-May 2021. But these negotiations were suspended due to the instability in the country.
In a related context, the living crises are still deepening in Tunisia, while retirees pensions always threatened of cuts.
Some retirees are forced to look for work or rely on family assistance to meet the costs of living crises.
More than one million retirees are facing austerity measures by the government. Retired government sector employees were surprised by the National Pension and Social Insurance’s implementation of a deduction on part of January’s salaries without prior notification, before the president issued a decision to stop the deduction from the salaries of this category.
