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 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. 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. 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.