Saied Criticizes Influential Families in Meeting with Minister of Economy
Tunisia's President affirmed that sovereign rating institutions had placed Tunisia in advanced rankings due to the connections of these families with external circles
Tunisian President Kais Saied cast doubt on the reality of growth rates in previous regimes, stating they served specific families during his meeting Wednesday with Feryel Ouerghi-Sebai, Minister of Economy and Planning.
According to a statement published on the official page of the presidency, Saied emphasized the “necessity for economic choices to be purely national choices based on new visions that break with what prevailed in the past, as some still unfortunately work towards returning to it.”
He stated that rentier economy never creates wealth and cannot be a pillar of economic growth, adding that “those who benefited from it were a few families, and growth rates were calculated not based on national wealth but on the accumulated wealth of these families.”
He stressed that “the entities that positioned themselves for classification and rating placed Tunisia in advanced rankings and gave it accolades due to the connections of these families with external circles,” adding, “If these numbers were objective and scientific, many public facilities wouldn’t be in the situation they are in today.”
He called for the urgent development of fair development plans where “the social role of the state cannot be absent because there is no real growth without social justice, and there is no economic and social growth without the state assuming its social role in health, education, transportation, and other facilities.”
This isn’t the first time Saied has criticized international rating institutions for their reports that lower the country’s sovereign rating.
The president repeatedly criticizes the rentier economy and the control of some influential families over certain structural sectors, a position former EU Ambassador to Tunisia, Patrice Bergamini, referred to, saying, “There is a lobby of families controlling the Tunisian economy.”
Saied called for confronting some laws that prevent young people from accessing certain economic sectors, as they are monopolized by some of these families, but so far, there hasn’t been a qualitative shift in laws concerning economic fields, with the focus remaining on the necessity of forming private companies.
Recently, the Tunisian president stirred controversy after dismissing Adnan Al-Aswad as Director-General of the National Institute of Statistics and appointing Bouzid El-Nasiri, which was interpreted as reflecting the presidency’s frustration with reports discussing low growth rates and problems facing some economic sectors.
Tunisia suffers from excessive bureaucracy, which has hindered many important investment projects both domestically and internationally, in addition to the spread of corruption in some administrations, as repeatedly highlighted by Kais Saied.
