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Tunisia's trade deficit has narrowed by 1.3% to 6,856.3 million Tunisian dinars (MTD) in the first seven months of 2016, against 6,943.1 MTD during the same period last year, according to the results of foreign trade published in a statement by the Trade Ministry.
The coverage of imports by exports has therefore improved by 0.2 points to 70.7% since early 2016, against 70.5% in the same period of 2015.
This improvement is attributable to lower imports (0.7%) at a faster pace than exports (0.5%).
Based on analyses of the National Institute of Statistics (INS), imports have decreased, following the continuous fall in the imports of energy by 3.29% and the 1.13% drop in imports of basic agricultural products, particularly grain, after the decrease in prices on the world market.
Conversely, imports of raw materials, semi-manufactured equipment and products posted an increase varying between 2.6 and 6.7%.
As for exports by offshore companies, they posted a growth of 11.3% in value against 1.7% in the same period of 2015.
The performance of mining and phosphate sector has improved markedly in the first seven months of the year, which helped to increase the sector's exports by 86.8% compared to last year.
Exports of other products have also increased by 5.6% against a decline of 5.9% in 2015, with the exception of olive oil exports, which fell to 495 MTD in 2016 against 1,446.4 MTD in 2015.
© Tunis-Afrique Presse 2016
