Tunisia – Skills Development for Employment : The Role of Technical and Vocational Education and Training

Tunisia is expected to enter a recession in 2020 as a result of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the slowdown in production due to no demand, and decline in tourism. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged only 1.8 percent per year in 201...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: World Bank
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2020
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/465581593566209488/Tunisia-Skills-Development-for-Employment-The-Role-of-Technical-and-Vocational-Education-and-Training
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34068
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Summary:Tunisia is expected to enter a recession in 2020 as a result of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the slowdown in production due to no demand, and decline in tourism. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth averaged only 1.8 percent per year in 2011–2018 compared to 4 percent in 2001-2005 and 4.5 percent in 2006–2010. Despite a good performance of tradable services, growth slowed down from 2.7 percent in 2018 to 1 percent in 2019. 1 This slowdown may be attributed to several factors, including the death of President Essebsi, presidential and parliamentary elections, a drop in industrial production, and fall in agricultural growth. The World Bank estimates that Tunisia’s potential GDP growth has dropped by 2 to 2.5 percentage points in the past 15 years due to declining physical and human capital, persistently low productivity, and lower competitiveness. The COVID-19 crisis will exacerbate Tunisia’s growth challenges in the short and possibly medium term. A Government of Tunisia (GoT) and World Bank study estimates that a month-long lockdown would reduce growth by 0.9 percentage points in 2020.2 According to the same study, two to three months of lockdown would adversely affect the highly exposed export-oriented sectors (mechanical and electrical products, and textiles), services (tourism, commerce), and transport sectors and reduce growth by at least 4 percentage points in 2020. These negative growth effects will be accentuated by a projected sharp decline in investment, domestic demand, and productivity as the crisis lengthens.