Decree 148: the zero-interest "honour loans"
What decree 148 obliges Tunisian banks to do, who pays for it, and why nobody has been able to borrow yet.
Decree no. 2026-148, dated 23 July 2026, appeared in the official gazette the following day. It sets the terms of a loan the 2024 cheque reform had already written into the commercial code and left without rules. Every bank must now open an account in its books, the honour financing line account, and pay into it at least 8 percent of its profit each year. The loans carry no interest, no guarantee and no file fee. They run for two years at most, with up to six months' grace.
The decree names four kinds of borrower: individuals, holders of micro-projects, small and medium firms, and community companies. A declaration on honour entitles nobody to the money, the tax adviser Mohamed Salah Ayari warned in early August. The bank still judges each file, has ten working days to answer, and must give reasons for a refusal. Aram Belhadj, an economist at the University of Carthage, says the decree never explains how a bank is to judge repayment capacity once guarantees are forbidden.
The state is not funding these loans. The banks are, out of profit their shareholders had in most cases already voted and been paid. Ayari put the first year's total at about 120 million dinars, at least half of it reserved for small and medium firms and community companies. The MP Imed Aouled Jebril reaches nearly 129 million, working from the 2025 results published by about ten banks. La Presse carried both estimates on 4 August, and they measure the same 8 percent.
The decree applies from the allocation of 2025 profit, and article 8 gives a bank fifteen days from the general meeting that voted that allocation to pay the money in. Most big banks held those meetings between April and June 2026, before publication. African Manager, a Tunisian business news site, calls that a retroactivity in fact: the 8 percent falls on profit already paid out. It also finds no way in the decree to recover money from a borrower who defaults, and penalties aimed at the bank, not the borrower.
A month after the decree was published, the lending had still not started. The banking-law specialist Mohamed Nekhili said on 18 August that customers had been turning up at branches, and that the central bank had told banks not to take applications there. Each bank is to open a secure online platform instead, and the loans begin once those platforms are linked to the central bank's real-time information system.
The numbers
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