The Tunisian Industrial Promotion Agency recently stated that the country’s total industrial investment in the first seven months of 2014 was 1.83 billion tud, a decrease of 19.1% from the 2.26 billion tud in the same period in 2013 (1 Tunisian dinar is approximately 0.57 US dollars) . Among them, investment in the textile and apparel industry fell by 4.5% year-on-year.
The department stated that currently, industrial investment in Tunisia this year has created a total of 32,439 jobs, a year-on-year decrease of 15.7%. In the same period last year, there were 38,500 new jobs. Since the beginning of this year, except for the 10.6% increase in investment in the chemical industry, investment in other major industrial fields has shown an overall decline: the footwear and leather industry has decreased by 10%, the machinery industry has decreased by 7.4%, and the clothing and textile industry has decreased by 4.5%.
In addition, the amount of foreign investment in joint ventures in Tunisia dropped from TU1.1 billion in the same period of 2013 to TU640 million, a decrease of 41.9%. However, investment by wholly foreign-owned enterprises has increased, and more and more foreign direct investors have shown their unwillingness to invest in cooperation with local businessmen. This phenomenon is intriguing.
