Tunisia’s President Moncef Marzouki
announced on Friday his decision to voluntarily take a two-thirds pay
cut as the government grapples with a financial situation it has
described as “critical.”
“We are facing a financial and
economic crisis. The state must be a model… That is why I have decided
to lower the legal salary of the president of the republic to a third”
of its current level, Marzouki said in a statement.
The Tunisian economy has suffered
from the instability that followed the 2011 revolution, which toppled
long-time autocrat Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and ignited the Arab Spring.
Presidential spokesman Adnane Mansar
had said that Marzouki earned a gross monthly wage of 30,000 Tunisian
dinars (around 13,600 euros), and a net income of 20,000 dinars (9,100
euros).
President Marzouki: a great example to follow
Marzouki, who has been head of state
since late 2011, also said he had ordered further reductions in the
expenses of the presidency.
Some Tunisian media have criticised
the perceived excesses of the presidency, with much of the country still
threatened by social conflict fuelled by poverty and high unemployment.
On Friday the World Bank approved a
$100 million loan (72 million euros) to help small and medium sized
businesses, seen as crucial to the economic recovery of Tunisia’s
private sector.
It said there are 624,000 such
businesses in Tunisia, employing around 1.2 million people, who make up
an estimated 44 percent of the workforce in the formal private sector.
The government said last week that
the country’s public finances were in such a critical state that it had
resorted to “exceptional measures” to ensure that April wages were paid.
In January, the International
Monetary Fund released more than $500 million, part of a $1.76 billion
loan to support Tunisia, shortly after a new technocratic government was
sworn in under a deal to end months of political instability.
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