TUNIS — Tunisia's economy grew 2.3 percent in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the first estimate of the quarterly national accounts released on Saturday by the National Institute of Statistics. On seasonally adjusted figures, output rose 1.4 percent against the first quarter, bringing growth over the first half of the year to 2.4 percent.

The number continues a run of positive quarters, but it arrives with an unusually clear split inside it: the parts of the economy that grew are the ones that depend on rain and on visitors, and the parts that shrank are the ones that dig things out of the ground.

Where the growth came from

Agriculture confirmed its recovery with value added up 5.5 percent year on year, contributing 0.51 percentage points to overall growth. Services added 1.9 percent and contributed 1.18 points — the single largest block. Within services, hotels, restaurants and cafés rose 4.6 percent, information and communication 3.5 percent, and transport 1.7 percent.

Construction grew 3.6 percent. Manufacturing managed 0.9 percent, helped by miscellaneous industries (up 3.7 percent), agrifood (2.1 percent) and mechanical and electrical industries (1.6 percent). Taken as a whole, though, industry advanced only 0.3 percent over the year.

Where it did not

The weak point is the block covering energy, mining, water, sanitation and waste, where value added fell 1.7 percent. Mining alone dropped 9.6 percent; oil and gas extraction fell 1.1 percent.

That contraction is not a statistical accident. It is the same phosphate and hydrocarbon underperformance that has shaped Tunisia's trade balance, its energy import bill and its public finances for several years, and it is now subtracting directly from headline growth quarter after quarter.

On the demand side, domestic demand — consumption plus investment — rose 3.3 percent and contributed 3.61 points. External trade pulled in the opposite direction, contributing minus 1.33 points. Exports of goods and services were not the problem: they rose 10.4 percent. Imports rose faster, at 11.2 percent.

What it does not settle

Business News noted that the half-year figure remains well short of the target the government set for itself, a gap that matters because the 2026 budget and the debt-servicing schedule were built on more optimistic assumptions. A revised budget for 2026 is under discussion; Maher El Kattari, who chairs the finance and budget committee in parliament, has said a supplementary finance bill could reach the assembly in October.

The composition of this quarter also carries a warning that officials have themselves raised elsewhere. Agriculture's 5.5 percent rebound is a recovery from a low base and depends on rainfall; tourism-linked services are seasonal and exposed to external demand. Neither is a durable substitute for extractive and manufacturing output.

The policy responses currently on the table are known. The central bank cut its policy rate by 50 basis points to 7 percent to support activity. A revised foreign exchange code would, under conditions, allow residents to hold foreign-currency accounts — a break with decades of tight control that its proponents argue would ease financing for exporters. And the recovery of phosphate output, on which the government has staked state guarantees for the Gafsa Phosphate Company, remains the variable that would most directly reverse the 9.6 percent mining decline recorded this quarter.