Year: 2017

The African Development Bank has approved a EUR 71.56 million loan to strengthen Tunisia’s public services through digitalisation. The Tunisian government is contributing EUR 63.4 million, bringing the total cost of the project to EUR 134.96 million for its Digital Tunisia 2020 National Strategic Plan, which will be executed between 2018 and 2021. The project is expected to strengthen public services through the use of digital platforms and includes the implementation of online administrative services, sectoral information services, a digital ID system, and a data exchange platform. An important feature…

Regional private equity Mediterrania Capital Partners signed a deal to offer €15 million ($850,015) to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, the European Bank for Construction and Development (EBRD) announced Tuesday. Working with the EBRD, Mediterrania Capital will be able to make equity and quasi-equity investments in SMEs in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia to boost their competitiveness. “The EBRD’s values of building market economies through businesses that are competitive, green, inclusive, resilient and well-governed are fully aligned with our goals as a private equity firm that…

The deficit of the food balance reached 1,276.9 million dinars (MD) over the last ten months of 2017, (against 884 MD in the same period of 2016), which accounts for 9.6% of the trade deficit, according to the latest data published by the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries. The coverage rate of the food trade balance fell to 65.8% From January 1 to October 31, 2017, compared with 71.1% in the same period of 2016. This fall is the result of a significant increase in the value of…

Construction work on Algeria’s East-West Highway project is finally drawing to a close. The highway project has been beset by delays and technical problems that in some instances have required whole sections to be rebuilt. A Chinese contractor, CITIC-CRCC, will complete the last 84km stretch of the East-West Highway, which runs to the border with Morocco. The East-West Highway itself forms part of the new North African route, running from Dakar to Cairo, Trans-Africa Highway 1. The 8,636km route joins Senegal in the west with Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria,…

The funds will be used by local state-owned utility STEG to support the deployment of 85 MW of new residential PV capacity across the Northern African country. Attijari bank, a Tunisia-based unit of Moroccan financial services provider Attijariwafa Bank, which is itself part of Morocco’s king Mohammed VI’s holding company the SNI, has agreed to provide Tunisia’s state-owned power and gas provider Société tunisienne de l’électricité et du gaz (STEG) with 182 million TND ($72.9 million) for its rebate solar energy program Prosol 2017-2021. Under the program, the STEG hopes…

By January 2018, the World Bank will provide Tunisia $100 million (about 250 million Tunisian dinars) for a project that aims to develop forest areas and landscapes in the internal regions of the country. This was told Agence Tunis presse (TAP) by Jade Salhab, senior expert in private sector’s development at the World Bank. Among the main concerned regions are the North-West and the Central-West. According to him, beside this initiative, another project to develop irrigated farming in the Northern farming areas, is actually being prepared and should be initialed in 2018. Let’s…