The Central Bank of Tunisia (French: Banque Centrale de Tunisie, BCT) is the central bank of Tunisia. The bank is located in Tunis and its current governor is Mustapha Kamel Nabli, who replaced Taoufik Baccar on 17 January 2011.

History

Tunisia gained independence in 1956. The Central Bank of Tunisia was formed two years later in 1958. In December 1958 the newly created Tunisian dinar was disconnected from the French franc.

Tunisia had a historically low inflation. The Tunisian Dinar was less volatile in 2000-2010 than the currencies of its oil-importing neighbors, Egypt and Morocco. Inflation was 4.9% in fiscal year 2007-08 and 3.5% in fiscal year 2008-09.

Functions

• Participates in the capital of any company providing an inter bank service, if necessary;
• Explores, in the context of mobilizing external resources for the State, the appropriate means for access to capital market with the best possible conditions of cost and maturity;
• Ensures centralizing of banking risks that it transmits to banks and financial institutions. Furthermore, it holds and manages a file of non-professional loans granted to private individuals and may, in this respect, ask companies giving this type of credit and traders applying credit sale system to provide it with any information related to these loans or sales;
• Assists private and public companies in arranging external borrowing operations and analyzing financing offers;
• Manages an information system meant to help banks appreciate the incurred risks at their fair value (unit of the unpaid cheques, risks, balance sheets);
• Collects economic information and makes it available to all operators through its publications;
• Works at the same time, in this respect, to develop communication to international rating agencies whose rating represents a pre-requisite to any access to international financial markets.

General task

The Central Bank of Tunisia's general assignment is to preserve price stability. In this respect the bank is notably in charge of :

• Watching over the monetary policy;
• Controlling money in circulation and being watchful with respect to sound functioning of systems of payments as well as guaranteeing their soundness, efficiency and security;
• Supervising the lending institutions;
• Preserving both the stability and security of the financial system.

Special tasks

Coins and notes issuing

The Central Bank exerts, on the State's behalf, the exclusive privilege of issuing on the territory of the Republic bearer banknotes and metal coins which are the only legal tender in the country.

Foreign currency operations

• The Central Bank is responsible for safe keeping and management of the country's reserve in foreign currencies and in gold;
• It intervenes on the inter bank market and publishes, just for information at the latest the following day, the inter bank exchange rate for currencies and banknotes;
• It is responsible for implementing the exchange regulation and legislation;
• It grants any licence provided for by this regulation and guarantees compliance with it by the authorized intermediaries.

Banker to the Government

• The Central Bank is the State financial agent for all its cash and banking transactions;
• It raises, on the State's behalf, funds in foreign currencies;
• It keeps at its head office as well as at its branches the Treasury current account and carries on, free of charge, all debit or credit transactions of this account.

Banker to the banks

• The Central Bank may uptake at banks and bodies specially approved by the Ministry of Finance, on its proposal, bills and claims on corporate and individuals in the terms it deems necessary to achieve the objectives of the monetary policy;
• With a view to regulating the monetary market, the Central Bank may buy or uptake at banks negotiable public bills as well as any claim or security on corporate and individuals mentioned on the list set up for this purpose by its Board;
• The Central Bank may receive in account, sums paid mainly by banks, other structures entitled to carry out credit transactions as well as private individuals and business concerns authorized by the BCT Executive Board.

"Authority" function and prudential rules

• The Central Bank defines prudential regulation, exerts a control on banks and financial establishments. The main purpose of this control is to guarantee the safety of deposits and of the banking system and penalize disciplinary misconduct;
• The Central Bank may ask banks and financial institutions to provide it with any statistics and information that it considers useful in following the credit evolution and the economic situation.

Supporting the State's economic policy

• The Central Bank of Tunisia may suggest to the government any measure which is likely to have positive impact on the balance of payments, the trend in prices, capital flows, public finance situation and the development of the national economy in general;
• It informs the President of the Republic about any action that may, according to the Governor and the Board, reinforce stability.

Monetary Policy

In compliance with article 33 (new) of law n°2006-26 of 15 May 2006 modifying law n°58-90 of 19 September 1958 providing for creation and organisation of the Central Bank of Tunisia (BCT), the main assignment of the monetary policy consists in preserving price stability.

In fact, the sound control of inflation as reflected through the trend in consumer price index, helps ensure a non-inflationary growth that contributes to job creation and improvement of social welfare while preserving the purchasing power.

To this end, through the instruments put at its disposal, the BCT influences the money market interest rate considered as the main instrument for conducting the monetary policy to achieve the final target of price stability.

This monetary policy framework is based, further to monetary and credit aggregates, on a diversified range of indicators closely tied to inflation. This involves import prices, output gap, underlying inflation and so on.

Given the importance of inflation forecasts for this monetary policy framework, major efforts are being implemented within the BCT to set up a device for analysis and forecast of inflation on the short term. This will help as a reference for decision making with respect to monetary policy and as a means of communication with the public.

This approach comes in the framework of developing and reinforcing the analytic framework aiming to better surround the different channels of transmission of the monetary policy and simulate the impact, notably, of variation of the key rate on the main economic variables.

Exchange policy

The Tunisian dinar (TND) exchange rate is determined on the interbank market. In this framework, local banks exchange the currencies among themselves or with their customers at freely-negotiated rates.

The role of the Central Bank of Tunisia consists in its intervention to fine-tune liquidity on the market in case of imbalance between supply and demand for currencies on this market. The Central Bank of Tunisia publishes, for disclosure, the currencies'daily average exchanges rates applied on the inter bank market over the previous day.

Useful links

Currency of Tunisia:

Tunisian dinar

List of Central Banks:

Central Banks

Official website of Central Bank of Tunisia:

www.bct.gov.tn

Ministry of Finance of Tunisia:

www.portail.finances.gov.tn