Tunisia - Regional Development and Job Creation Support Project

The Regional Development and Job Creation Support Programme (PADRCE) is a general budget support of EUR 183 million to the Tunisian Treasury, executed in a single disbursement. PADRCE supplements the two previous budget support operations (PAGDI and PARDI) whose completion reports concluded on the need to pursue reforms to bridge regional inequalities and create employment. The two pillars retained for this operation centre on: (i) Regional development; and (ii) Skills development, labour quality upgrade and social dialogue. The first pillar will help to speed up the implementation of public investments, improve local taxation and trigger the operationalisation of decentralisation to reduce disparities in access to public services. The second pillar completes and strengthens the first component by improving the quality of human capital and social dialogue. It thus aims to support structural educational and training system reforms especially by instituting functional sector coordination, improving sector governance, strengthening partnership with the private sector and establishing an appeased social climate. PADRCE is expected to help to bridge regional disparities on the one hand, and reduce the unemployment rate from 15% in 2015 to 14% in 2017, alongside a higher employment rate of young graduates from 68.6% in 2014 to 70% in 2017, on the other.