TUNISIA - Focus On Socio-Economic Development.

The Ben Ali regime has placed a great deal of importance on socio-economic development, i.e. while political freedoms were severely constrained, the freedoms associated with education, religion, and economic activities were made available to the Tunisian public in incremental does after 1987. The result is the emergence of a relatively liberal elite and middle class, which is also quite a large proportion of the population. An educated population is also more attuned to the demands of globalisation, and is better able to cope with it.

One unique factor that sets the Tunisian regime apart from most of its Middle East counterparts is the very strong emphasis on education, something that will continue to have a significant positive impact on the country's future prospects. Education is seen as an investment for the future, both in terms of economic and social stability. Schooling is mandatory for all boys and girls up to the age of 16. The goal is to create a highly qualified workforce in the years to come, which in turn will play a critical role in the maturation of the economy and in making state administration efficient and competitive.

The government allocates 20% of the budget to education, one of the highest budgetary allocations for this purpose in the world. There are numerous training and retraining programmes underway in the country as well. According to Tunisian officials, compulsory schooling and a large number of institutions of higher learning and training have produced the best qualified labour force not only in the whole of Africa but also in the southern Mediterranean rim. This is expected to attract investment from the EU in developing more skill-intensive industries, with companies simultaneously seeking to benefit from the lower wage levels relative to Europe.

Women make up 25% of the working population. This factor has also helped prevent radicalisation of society, because over the past decades Tunisian women have become relatively financially independent than women in other countries of the Middle East. Women's emancipation was perhaps the late president Bourguiba's greatest legacy as he was the one to change the status of women in the country and set them on the road to total participation in all spheres. (Bourguiba died at the age of 97 on April 6, 2000).

Overall poverty levels in Tunisia were brought down from 33% in 1967 to 6.2% in 1997, with significant changes having occurred in the first decade of the Ben Ali regime. Since 1997, the economy has grown at a healthy pace and poverty levels have been further dented. Life expectancy has risen from 50 years in 1956 to more than 70 years at present and infant mortality has dropped from 60 to 30 per thousand during the same period. The population growth rate of 1.6% is the lowest in Africa and one of the lowest in the developing world. However, unemployment remains a worrying problem facing the country's technocrats, although they maintain that if growth rates are raised to 7% this problem should be eradicated in under a decade; growth is not likely to exceed 6% in 2003.