Tunisian Olive Oil Industry Reaches New Heights

Summary

The Tunisian olive oil sec­tor is expe­ri­enc­ing sig­nif­i­cant growth, attrib­uted in part to the European Union’s deci­sion to waive taxes on Tunisian oil imports and pro­vide finan­cial assis­tance, with the coun­try now being one of Europe’s key allies in the Arab world. The increase in olive oil exports, along with the coun­try’s tran­si­tion to democ­racy and strug­gles with ter­ror­ism, has made Tunisia heav­ily reliant on olive oil exports and has sparked con­tro­versy among European olive grow­ers.

The Tunisian olive oil sec­tor is flour­ish­ing and show­cas­ing stag­ger­ing growth notably due to the European Union’s deci­sion to waive taxes on Tunisian oil imports and grant sub­stan­tial finan­cial help to the coun­try. The sec­tor is also ben­e­fit­ing from the global, ever-grow­ing demand.

The EU mea­sure on Tunisian olive oil imports fol­lowed the ter­ror attack on the beach resort of Sousse last year, which left thirty-eight peo­ple dead. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s for­eign pol­icy chief, jus­ti­fied the deci­sion, stat­ing: ​“Exceptional times call for excep­tional mea­sures.”
See Also:More Articles on Tunisia
Tunisia remains one of the Europe’s most impor­tant allies in the Arab world, strate­gi­cally speak­ing, and even more so since the Jasmine Revolution. The civil resis­tance move­ment that started on December 17, 2010 after Muhammad Bouazizi, a veg­eta­bles and fruit itin­er­ant seller who set him­self on fire after local author­i­ties con­fis­cated his cart and abused him ver­bally and phys­i­cally, quickly snow­balled into a big­ger rev­o­lu­tion which led to the oust­ing of then-pres­i­dent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali twenty-eight days later.

The coun­try has since been tran­si­tion­ing to a democ­racy through struc­tural changes. Such events greatly affected the nation’s econ­omy and geopol­i­tics and the European Union has remained vig­i­lant over Tunisia’s evo­lu­tion.

Moreover, the ter­ror attack of Sousse and another that hit the Bardo Museum of Tunis have severely impacted Tunisia’s tourism sec­tor, mak­ing the coun­try even more depen­dent on olive oil exports. The ter­ror­ist threat in North Africa has been increas­ing in the past few years, wor­ry­ing Tunisia’s eco­nomic part­ners even more.

The EU seeks to make it a priv­i­leged part­ner in the Arab world with hopes that it will help sta­bi­lize the coun­try. As a result, the European Union eased restric­tions on Tunisian olive oil imports since last spring.

Thirty-five thou­sand tons of Tunisian olive oil have been exported to the European Union in the past two years, tax-free and bil­lions have been spent by the EU since the Jasmine Revolution in order to boost the Tunisian econ­omy; the finan­cial help might reach €300 mil­lion per year soon.

Nearly three per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion works in the olive oil sec­tor, a whop­ping fig­ure that shows Tunisia’s strong depen­dence on oil exports. The EU mea­sure rep­re­sents a golden oppor­tu­nity for Tunisian grow­ers, but a direct threat to their European coun­ter­parts.

Many Italian olive grow­ers have been vocal about their oppo­si­tion to the EU’s finan­cial moves, a para­dox­i­cal stance con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of firms that make high prof­its blend­ing Tunisian olive oil with their own and label­ing it ​“Made in Italy.”

Tunisia’s olive oil econ­omy is boom­ing to unprece­dented lev­els. It exported 20,000 tons of olive oil in 2015 com­pared to just 400 tons ten years ago, a gleam­ing trend that shows no sign of slow­ing down.

• Politico


• The Financial