President Kais Saied called on Friday for the revision of article 25 of the Tunisian Central Bank's statute law, issued in 2016, in order to allow it to lend directly to the state in support of its efforts to finance the state budget. In a meeting with the Governor of the Central Bank of Tunisia (BCT), Marouane El Abassi, and the Deputy Governor, Nadia Kamha, he pointed out that "the time has come, in terms of budget financing, to review this article on commercial banks' lending to the State and to take advantage of the benefits generated by these loans". He considered that the provisions of the 1958 law on the Central Bank were better than the 2016 law on the issue of the independence of the issuing institution. The head of state stressed that some articles of the 2016 law directly serve the interests of commercial banks and allow them to acquire significant portions of the interest on loans granted. "The independence of the Central Bank of Tunisia does not mean independence from the state, but it must be in line with the policies of the state and it is necessary to distinguish between independence in the monetary field and independence in the field related to the state budget," Saied stressed. It is worth noting that Article 25 of the 2016 law on the Central Bank of Tunisia stipulates that "the central bank may not grant facilities in the form of advances or loans to the treasury or directly acquire bonds issued by the state". "Unfortunately, regardless of the Central Bank's independence and its role in controlling prices, it would have been better not to include this article, especially in this difficult period, because it is the commercial banks that benefit from it," Saied pointed out. He stressed that the central bank's main role in the national economy is to control monetary inflation and that the bank's departments are also in line with state policies. Several parties have called for the revision of the Tunisian Central Bank's statute law approved in 2016, especially the article on the central bank's independence, in order to support the state's efforts to raise financial resources to finance the state budget amid the impossibility for Tunisia to borrow on the global financial markets, as no agreement has been reached with the International Monetary Fund so far. The Tunisian Economic Observatory also called, in a press release issued on 22 June 2023, to reconsider the role of the Central Bank of Tunisia as one of the main pillars of public policy development, especially that the separation of monetary policy from financial and economic policy through the independence of the bank has contributed to disrupting the formulation of effective public policies to achieve economic development. In its published report entitled "Who determines monetary policy in Tunisia? The Central Bank is Hostage to the International Monetary Fund", the Observatory highlighted the urgent need to redefine the mission of the Central Bank of Tunisia in line with the needs of the economic situation, in order to promote investment and generate growth, and to break with the International Monetary Fund's approach, which limits the Central Bank's mission and restricts it to fighting inflation.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse