In a meeting with Prime Minister Najla Bouden, Tunisian President Kais Saied called for measures aimed at limiting damage to public finances, including imposing restrictions on the imports of a number of luxury items such as cosmetics and food for domestic animals, especially since Tunisians lack the necessities of life and basic materials due to the stifling financial crisis they are going through. country.
Statistics by the National Institute of Statistics indicate that the trade balance deficit in Tunisia during the first eight months of this year amounted to 16.9 billion dinars, mostly in exchanges with China, Turkey, Algeria and Russia.
Hatem Mazio, head of the National Chamber of Perfumes and Cosmetics, said in statements to Sky News Arabia that the Ministry of Commerce, with the aim of rationalizing the supply of non-essential materials, has set strict conditions for the supply of cosmetics related to declaring the value of the supplied materials accurately and verifying the certificates of origin and supply from the factory directly without resorting to intermediaries.
Mazio said that imports of perfumes and cosmetics represent only 0.5 percent of the total imported materials and cost the state less than $100 million annually, while providing nearly 20,000 job opportunities.
For her part, the head of the National Chamber of Barbershops and Beauty Shops, Faten Al-Amouri, expressed her concerns and the beauty sector professionals over the decision to reduce the supply of cosmetics, which will make it difficult for their work, which requires equipment and materials that are not available in the local market.
In an interview with Al-Amouri, Al-Amouri said that local brands, in turn, import a number of raw materials from abroad to manufacture their products, in addition to requiring part of the beauty salon’s clients for certain international brands, which would reduce the activity of their sector, which resumed work with difficulty two years after the Corona pandemic.
Al-Amouri added: “The economic solution should not be based on the cosmetics and catering sector, because it is difficult to dispense with these luxuries for a significant number of consumers.”
On the other hand, the Vice-President of the Consumer Defense Organization, Soraya al-Tabasi, stressed that the public interest requires the provision of hard currency for the supply of medicines and basic foodstuffs, and that the reduction in the supply of luxuries aims to push the Tunisian economy and secure the daily necessities of the citizen.
Al-Tabasi explained that it is a plan to rationalize the supply of luxuries that do not completely dispense with them, and it includes cosmetics, perfumes and materials needed in simple cosmetic interventions such as Botox, fillers and others, which consume a large percentage of hard currency, according to the activist in the Consumer Defense Organization.
Al-Tabassi considered that this rationalization would support Tunisian products and local perfumes and cosmetics factories, and that they in the organization encourage the consumption of Tunisian products that compete in terms of quality despite their simple cost.
It should be noted that talk about a plan to reduce the supply of makeup and perfumes sparked a wave of sarcastic comments on social media platforms regarding the way people live without makeup and cosmetics, while the readings of economists confirm that the list of materials supplied by Tunisia actually contains a number of unnecessary luxuries for the national economy. And draining the hard currency as well as being stifled competition for local products.
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