Leaders of the G8 group of major economies meeting in France on May 26th pledged US$40bn in external loans over the next five years to Tunisia and Egypt, of which Tunisia expects to receive the biggest share-some US$25bn. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that 50% of the funds would come from multilateral banks, such as the EIB, the AfDB and the AFESD, 25% come from bilateral loans, including EUR1bn from France and 25% from OPEC members, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait. The interim prime minister, Mr Essebsi, said the loans were needed to support a new programme of economic development designed to boost growth and cut unemployment and poverty. The programme will address four priority areas: good governance and transparency; employment and regional development; social improvements, such as education, training and welfare; and the modernisation of the financial sector. Public consultation on the plan will begin shortly.

The scale of the social problems facing Tunisia was indicated by the social affairs minister, Mohammed Naceur, who said that some 24.7% of the population lived below the international poverty threshold of US$2 per day. This is over six times the poverty rate of 3.8% claimed by the former regime. Mr Naceur also said that 700,000 people were now unemployed, of whom 69% (483,000) were under 30 and 170,000 were university graduates. If his figures are accurate this would mean that some 180,000 jobs have been lost this year and imply an unemployment rate of over 18% of the workforce (some 3.8m), which is significantly higher than the official unemployment rate of 13% reported by the former regime. Moreover, the employment and training minister, Said Ayedi, has repeated his forecast that unemployment would rise during 2011 as the economy struggled to grow, despite government promises to recruit 20,000 more state workers. The economy needs to grow by 6-7% a year to generate enough jobs to reduce unemployment, but economic growth is forecast to be much slower this year and in the following years. Mr Ayedi also said that the government aimed to reduce unemployment to 7% by 2016, although that target looks optimistic.

Mr Naceur's figures for poverty cast doubt on the reliability of official data produced by the Institut national de la statistique under the former regime, which is widely suspected of having manipulated, or even falsified, socioeconomic data.