Informal Trade in Tunisia - Dr Sami Bensassi

Dr Sami Bensassi travelled to Tunisia with the World Bank to assess the value of informal trade at Tunisia land borders.

Ras Ajdir, Tunisia’s main border post with Libya is quite a barren place with a few buildings in a semi desert area 20 miles away from the next Tunisian city. After the Tunisian revolution in February 2011 and during the Libyan civil war, the Tunisian transitional government struggled to keep control of the region. As a consequence, an already existing string of informal trade activities extended rapidly.

The purpose of the mission organized and financed by the World Bank was to assess the value of this informal trade, to meet with border agency officials and the local informal traders. Dr Sami Bensassi arrived at Ras Ajdir the 5th of May 2013 to supervise a data gathering mission of one week.

“I arrived in Tunis the 3rd of May. I linked up with a former colonel of the custom agency and started the following day with some visits of officials in the government and an interview of informal/formal traders in Tunis port. The 5th of May we arrived in the region bordering Libya and with the help of local contacts began the field study through interviews of local informal traders”

Jerrycans used by gasoline informal traders along the road to Libya border crossing.

Seven months later a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper was published (Ayadi et al., 2013, Estimating informal trade across Tunisia's land borders)*. It evaluates the value of informal trade at the Tunisian Land Borders, the loss for the Tunisian central state through unpaid taxes and Custom Duties and underlines the fact that informal trade is the main economic activity for the local population.

The report had a strong impact in the local and North African Medias making the headlines of TV news, Radio political/Economic shows and newspapers. It will also be presented at the Center For the Study of African Economies conference in Oxford next month.

*Ayadi L., Benjamin N. , S. Bensassi, and Raballand G. (2013). Estimating informal trade across Tunisia's land borders. Policy Research Working Paper. The World Bank