Tunisia Tour

TUNISIAONLINENEWS – Tunisian industrial exports reached 16 billion dinars in 2009, i.e. four times as much as those recorded in 1999, the year when the Tunisian-European partnership agreement was signed, said Minister of Industry and Technology Afif  Chelbi during a debate held on Tuesday at the Chamber of Deputies in Tunis.

These statistics reveal that nearly 25% of industrial exports touch on high technological content products, compared with 5% in 1995. Tunisia hopes to achieve a rate of 50% by 2014.
Mr. Chelbi stressed that Tunisia, the first southern Mediterranean country to have signed an association agreement with the European Union (EU), has one of the best industrial upgrading program in the Mediterranean region, as testified by international rating agencies.
He  said that about 4,500 companies have joined the industrial upgrading program, which came in force in 1995, pointing out that, in other Mediterranean countries, this number has not exceeded the 1500-company mark.
Mr. Chelbi also announced that  some 1500 European investors took part in events held in 2009 as part of the promotion campaign of the strategy on Tunisian industry by 2016. Efforts designed to promote this strategy will be pursued and will target other Asian and American destinations, he said.