By the end of September 2026, Tunisia’s trade deficit stood at 20,997 million dinars, compared with 16,727 million a year earlier. The gap is closing in on 21,000 million dinars, marking a sharp deterioration in the external trade balance over the first nine months of the year, according to Réalités Magazine.
How large is Tunisia’s trade deficit at the end of September 2026?
By the end of September 2026, Tunisia's trade deficit stood at 20,997 million dinars, compared with 16,727 million dinars a year earlier.
By the end of September 2026, Tunisia’s trade deficit stood at 20,997 million dinars, compared with 16,727 million dinars a year earlier. According to Réalités Magazine, this figure reflects a sharp deterioration in the external trade balance over the first nine months of the year, and it sits on the edge of 21,000 million dinars, a detail flagged by the same source.
Is this deficit a one-off, or part of a deeper trend?
Whenever Tunisia’s external accounts come under scrutiny, the diagnosis is almost always the same: a trade balance that is structurally in deficit, and a shortfall that keeps widening from one year to the next. This assumption, which has become the standard lens for reading foreign trade figures, long predates the end-of-September results.
Seen in that light, the latest figure is simply a continuation of an already familiar trajectory.
What exactly do these trade flows cover?
Before commenting on the scale of this deficit, it is worth clarifying what these trade flows actually cover. What exactly is being counted needs to be settled first, before any comparison or interpretation of the figure announced for the end of September 2026.
This clarification shapes how the trade balance can be read. As long as the exact scope of these flows is not further detailed, caution is warranted in interpreting this figure of close to 21 billion dinars.
The figure bears out the assumption that has long weighed on Tunisia’s trade balance, that of an ever-widening deficit, even though the exact scope of these trade flows has yet to be clarified.
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