France asks Tunisia to finalize negotiations with the IMF as soon as possible

1 Apr. (EUROPE PRESS) –

The French Foreign Minister, Catherine Colonna, has asked her Tunisian counterpart, Nabil Ammar, to make an effort to close the negotiations to conclude the agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as soon as possible and thus activate the aid of the European partners and of the US at a time of serious political crisis in the North African country.

Tunisia is negotiating with the international institution the granting of a new loan of 1,700 million euros to face a record public debt of 89 percent of GDP, amid strong daily protests against the appropriation of powers by the country’s president, Kais Saied, who in In July 2021, he arrogated the powers of Parliament in what his critics described as a self-coup.

The French Foreign Ministry has applauded the “first positive contact” between Colonna and Ammar “to remember France’s unfailing support for the Tunisian people, especially in the face of the economic emergency”, after the telephone interview held this Friday, the first since Ammar arrived to office in February of this year.

“A priority: the completion of the agreement with the IMF,” the French government has requested in its assessment of the meeting, collected on the Ministry’s Twitter account.

For his part, Ammar reiterated his government’s willingness “to continue a constructive dialogue with all its partners, to support the reforms desired by the Tunisians, after the experience of the last decade”, referring to the post-revolutionary period that He ended the rule of Tunisian autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.