The social effect of the external public debt in Tunisia: An Empirical investigation

Thèmes abordés

Tunisia, social effect, Empirical investigation

Résumé du document

To judge the ability of a country to support the external debt burden and reimbursement in the agreed deadlines his service; most of the economists used many ratios such as the stock of debt to GDP or GNP as well as to the debt service reported to exports or current revenue. These ratios are likely to express the degree of solvency of the indebted countries which allows creditors to ensure their reimbursement. This approach based on the solvency of debtors is only targeted toward the interests of lenders without taking into account the debtor countries. In this sense, a reasonable treatment on the question of debt require the rejection of the approach by the solvency, based only on the interests of creditors, and keep the approach by the sustainability, who refuses to sacrifice the satisfaction of basic needs of the populations of the indebted countries when they reimburse their external debt.

This approach propose another analysis of the sustainability of external debt and highlights that the debtors into paying the service of their debt through a drain on resources that it generates are that pay their debts to the detriment of the basic needs of
their population by a reduction in spending on education, health and infrastructure which can affect negatively their prosperity and good life.

Extraits

[...] What we propose in this work; it is to review the study of the approach by the sustainability of the debt by integrating the interests of debtors in the analysis. This new analysis of the sustainability offers the possibility to study the social impact of the debt which has been often neglected in favor for only economic vision of the question. Page 5 The social effect of the external public debt in Tunisia: An Empirical investigation 1.2 - Principles of the new approach by the sustainability of the debt many authors speak about debt sustainability and they insisted only on the sustainability in the interests of creditors: they especially highlighting the cases for which a reduction in the external debt is in favor of the creditors (CLAESSENS, 1990) or by determining the conditions that permit to the creditors to be insured for a maximum of reimbursement (Cohen, 1995). [...]

[...] (source:ministry of public health) Page 10 The social effect of the external public debt in Tunisia: An Empirical investigation Tunisia has not exceeded a dangerous threshold at the level of the ratio NHE/GDP compared with the average of the middle-income countries, either compared to of Lebanon and to the Jordan country considered as references for health at the Arab level. In terms of spending per capital, they are $118 on 2008 in Tunisia 70.9 on 2000 and $ 49.4 on 1995), against 398 in Lebanon and 134 in Jordan. [...]

[...] This approach may disclose the social effect of the debt which has often been neglected in the analysis in favor of the economic effects in terms of growth and investment. Empirically; the social effect of the debt in Tunisia does not constitute a major obstacle to the satisfaction of the Tunisian people: the main results approved that the external debt burden does not compromise the basic expenses of the population (health, education) and a special attention should always ensured as regards the use of the external funds which should be directed toward the improvement of life of the population. [...]

[...] Idlemouden K., Raffinot M. [2005], Le fardeau virtuel de la dette extérieur Cahiers de recherche EURIsCO, Université Paris Dauphine. Krugman P. [1988a], Market-Based Debt-Reduction Schemes NBER working paper, n°2587. Krugman P. [1988b], Financing vs. [...]

[...] forgiving a debt overhang Journal of Development Economics, vol.29, p.253-268. Loser C. [2004], External debt sustainability: guidelines for low- and middle-income countries G-24 discussion paper series, CNUCED. Moisseron J. Y. et Raffinot, M. [...]