Four decrees (nos. 193-196) published in the official gazette Jort on Friday 31 July, two days after parliament approved them, bring into force a set of guarantee and financing agreements: 110 million euros from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to the phosphate company CPG for mining equipment and a filter-press system meant to recycle up to 90 percent of process water; two murabaha operations with the ITFC worth 70 and 50 million dollars to buy feedstock for Groupe chimique tunisien's fertiliser output; and a second amendment worth 500 million dollars between the central bank and Afreximbank to cover part of the 2026 state budget. That third drawdown takes Afreximbank's cumulative line to Tunisia to 1.7 billion dollars since 2022. La Presse reports the Afreximbank rate was negotiated down from as much as 9 percent to a fixed 5.86 percent over seven years with a two-year grace period, terms that show the price of financing the budget without an IMF programme, even as the government keeps to its doctrine of relying on itself.
In an analysis published on 31 July (Datanalysis no. 34), the Tunisian Economic Observatory shows that Steg's investment in electricity generation fell from 1,947 million dinars over 2016-2020 to 248 million over 2021-2025, an average drop of 87 percent, while net installed capacity was divided by 3.2. Peak demand meanwhile rose an average 3.8 percent a year, hitting a record 4,888 MW on 14 August 2024. Roughly 870 MW of fully tendered Steg projects, the Skhira combined-cycle plant (500 MW), the Jbel Tbaga wind farm (80 MW) and six photovoltaic plants totalling 300 MW: have been stalled since 2018 awaiting sign-off from the energy ministry, Steg's supervising authority under the 2005 and 2016 decrees. The finding shifts responsibility for the summer's rolling cuts away from the weather and away from the utility, onto government choices that the observatory says favoured private and foreign renewables investment over the public grid.
The association Intersection pour les droits et les libertés published a set of infographics on the evening of 1 August putting the prison population at more than 33,000 for an official capacity of 17,000 beds: an occupancy rate of 194 percent, against 23,000 inmates in 2022. It gives Tunisia 267 prisoners per 100,000 inhabitants, above Morocco (238) and far above France (100), and names facilities where occupancy has passed 200 percent: Kairouan at 251 percent (2024), Mornaguia 210 percent (2024), Gabès 209 percent (2022) and Sfax 200 percent (2024). It also counts thirteen deaths in custody between July 2025 and July 2026 that it describes as suspicious, warning that the absence of transparent investigations risks turning individual abuses into structural impunity. The figures are the association's own and have not been confirmed by the justice ministry.
