Tunisian economic expert Mourad Al Hatab said that Tunisia can repay 53% of its external debt, equivalent to 3800 million dinars, if the government stops importing from Turkey.
He added, in a statement to “Arabs Today”, “The value of Tunisia's imports from Turkey in 2016 amounted to about 1838 million dinars, 70 percent of which are non-core products, noting that annual debt accounts for 10 percent of total imports.
Tunisia has been experiencing a continuous worsening of the trade deficit to reach 3878.9 million dinars during March 2017 compared to 2466.3 million dinars during the same period in 2016.
Hattab pointed to the worsening trade deficit with Turkey (478.1 million dinars) China (942.4 million dinars), which remains the "World Workshop" in which any country can register a trade deficit. "These figures reflect an anarchic view of the Tunisian economy," he said, adding that "the volume of imports is almost equivalent to the volume of goods sold through smuggling in the Tunisian market." "This phenomenon is more disastrous for the Tunisian economy than smuggling," he said.