Tunisia is undergoing a dense economic transition. Tax pressure is now regarded as the top priority by business leaders, digital transformation is underway but remains fragile, family governance must be reinvented before the generational handover, and female participation in leadership bodies remains in the minority—these signals converge toward a single conclusion.
The profile of the Tunisian executive is changing in nature. By 2030, patrimonial authority and technical know-how will no longer suffice to guarantee the longevity of an organization. Backed by data, this survey draws the portrait of the leader that the national economic fabric must train, attract, and retain in order to transform a decade of constraints into a decade of opportunities.
The figures of a turning point
The eleventh edition of the Tunisia Barometer of Enterprises, published by EY in May 2026 with 278 leaders and senior executives, captures a business climate on the path to stabilization but still constrained. The discontent of leaders with the institutional situation has fallen markedly, from 88% in 2023 to 60% in 2026. Inflation has fallen to 4.9% and the unemployment rate to 15.2%, while GDP growth is limited to 2.5% in 2025, a pace deemed insufficient to durably reduce unemployment. Public debt exceeds 80% of GDP and the trade deficit approaches 22 billion dinars.
A striking feature of this edition is that tax pressure, for the first time, becomes the leaders’ primary concern, ahead of the economic situation itself—a shift that reflects a sense of inequity between the formal sector and the parallel economy.
Despite this climate, 82% of the surveyed companies plan to maintain or increase their investments, evidence of real but cautious resilience, the majority aiming to maintain current levels rather than undertake a bold expansion. These data sketch the framework within which the leader of tomorrow will have to operate, a framework demanding fiscal discernment, risk management, and medium-term forecasting capability.
The patriarchal model is running out of steam
