Description:
Tunisia must move from a low value-added
and low cost economy to a higher value-added, knowledge
intensive economy in order to significantly reduce
unemployment, its overriding challenge. This Development
Policy Review (DPR) provides a discussion of the key issues
and challenges that are involved in achieving this goal.
Towards this end, it discusses trade integration, innovation
policies and enabling environment reforms (macro stability,
economic regulation and governance, financial sector and
labor market reforms and capital account opening) that could
facilitate the structural transformation of the economy. The
DPR is organized as follows: chapter one reviews growth and
employment outcomes and challenges; chapter two discusses
the rationale for increasing the pace of structural
transformation of the economy in order to boost growth and
reduce unemployment; chapter three examines the strengths
and weaknesses of Tunisia's innovation system and
strategies and proposes reform options in light of the
international experience; chapter four discusses key aspects
of Tunisia's global integration that could further
contribute to innovation and productivity growth; chapters
five discusses the key improvement in the enabling
environment needed to support innovation and productivity
growth (economic regulation, education sector reforms,
financial sector reforms and labor market); finally, chapter
six discusses structural transformation issues in natural
resource-intensive sectors and examine the specific sectoral
reforms needed to address the trade-offs between several
objectives, including growth and natural resources preservation.