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E-mailOne of the prevailing problems of modern Tunisia is the continuously high unemployment rate. The official rate is 14%, but unofficially it may be higher. Half of Tunisian college graduates cannot find employment within a year. Such a reality is incredibly demoralizing for Tunisian graduates and their families. It is not healthy of society and may end be dangerous as unemployed young man may become picking fruit for Islamic radicals.
The Tunisian government has decided to get involved and employ these people.
The New York Times
>The Tunisian travel industry will recruit some 1,000 unemployed university graduates for permanent positions, Tunisia Online reported on Monday (April 4th). A preliminary training session of 400 hours will prepare the young people to meet the needs of the sector, Tunisia’s tourism and employment ministers said after meeting with hotel and travel agent union officials in Tunis.
Not an approach is good, but a 1,000 is small and government employment is no path to longer term economic growth. Tunisia needs to do more and doing more would require very little.
Take the paper work involved in starting a business. In Tunisia, it takes numerous sheets, hours of bureaucracy maneuvering, weeks of waiting and hundreds of dinars in licensing. Many potential small-businessmen and women find the task daunting and forgo starting a business. Tunisia could so much to empower potential entrepreneurs by streamlining paperwork into a few sheets, reduce the cost of licensing and make the window from filing to licensing one day [as in Hong Kong]. This would not cost any money for Tunisia to do and the benefits would be numerous.
The Tunisian government should know that improving tax efficiency, bureaucracy and more stringently protecting property rights will do more for economic growth than providing jobs in tourism which is a low-skill industry. Tunisia deals well in many of these qualifications, but improvement [particularly in streaming the paper needed for starting a new business] can still be made.
