The issue of pensions in Tunisia forms one of the Gordian knots of the country’s socio-economic transition, crystallizing the tensions between the imperatives of financial sustainability and the preservation of social peace.
Facing the financial strangulation of public and private funds, the dominant liberal view advocates classic parametric reforms: raising the retirement age and extending the contribution period (the number of quarters worked).
What the author emphasizes
However, this linear approach obscures deep structural realities, such as under-collection, informality, gender wage inequalities, and the weight of precarity on low wages, as well as informal work.
To grasp this complex dossier, one should start from a comparative snapshot of the public and private sectors, analyze the numerical operation of the funds, measure the worsening of their deficits, question the dogma of extending the contribution period, and finally explore credible alternatives that would keep the legal age at 62.
Two Funds, Two Realities
The concise assessment of the Tunisian pension system rests on a marked institutional duality between the public and private sectors.
The public sector is overseen by the National Pension and Social Welfare Fund (CNRPS), which covers civil servants, local-government officials, and public administrative institutions, representing about 750,000 active workers, plus special regimes.
On the other side, the private sector and non-salaried workers fall under the National Social Security Fund (CNSS), notably through the Non-Agricultural Employees Regime (RSNA), which includes nearly 2.3 million contributing workers.
Historically, the public sector enjoyed a retirement age set at 60, recently raised to 62 in an attempt to curb the crisis, while the private sector maintains a reference age of 60, but under strong adjustment pressures.
This structural dichotomy is paired with a deep asymmetry in career management, private-sector workers bearing the blunt brunt of labor-market instability, informality, and underreporting of real wages.
The Demographic and Financial Balance of the Regimes
The operation of these two funds rests on financial and demographic balances that are today heavily undermined, as reflected in telling numerical indicators.
CNRPS has around 380,000 pensioners with a demographic ratio below the critical threshold of 2 active workers per retiree, with an average pension of about 1,200 Tunisian dinars (TND) per month and a legal ceiling set at 80% of the last earned salary.
CNSS, for its part, pays pensions to more than 850,000 beneficiaries with a ratio of about 2.4 workers for every retiree; the average pension there is much more modest, around 450 to 550 TND per month, while the ceiling for the general regime pension is legally capped at six times the minimum wage (about 3,160 TND).
In the private sector, the overall social contribution rate reaches 26.75% of gross salary, split into 17.07% employer share and 9.68% employee share.
Recovery, according to the author
Nevertheless, the ground reality is strongly altered by an effective overall recovery rate that does not exceed 75%, meaning that a quarter of due contributions is never collected by the funds.
Accrued Receivables and Deficits
The worsening deficits of the pension funds have translated into a massive accumulation of liabilities and unpaid receivables that amount to several billions of dinars (the CNSS’s stock of unrecovered receivables alone exceeding 5 billion TND).
The explanation for this abyss lies in the cumulative effect of annual deficits not covered, aggravated by the chronic insolvency of many public and private enterprises that withhold the employee portion from payrolls without remitting it to the funds. Added are late penalties and the absence of effective enforcement mechanisms.
To fill these monthly treasury gaps and continue paying pensions on time, the State injects direct balancing subsidies drawn from the national budget and grants Treasury advances, which directly increases the overall budget deficit and contributes to the rise of Tunisia’s sovereign debt. Meanwhile the CNSS uses bank overdrafts and treasury credit.
The Limits of Delaying the Retirement Age
The current parametric criteria, dictated by an orthodox liberal vision, inexorably lead to extending the working life and pushing back the retirement age. By focusing exclusively on parametric levers, successive reforms assume that raising the legal age and lengthening the contribution period will mathematically solve the actuarial deficit.
However, this approach clashes with an inexorable social reality: due to precarity, youth unemployment, and late entry into working life, a large majority of workers fails to accumulate the required number of years to obtain a full pension, resulting in pensions that are far too low even with a postponed retirement.
Moreover, for a worker earning the minimum wage (about 528 TND), bearing a total social deduction of around 27% on purchasing power eroded by inflation drives informal arrangements. The choice to remain without retirement coverage to maximize immediate net salary becomes a survival strategy, depriving the funds of the resources they need and dooming workers to poverty in old age.
Structural Alternatives Considered
The perspective advocated in this column
There are, nonetheless, other durable solutions that could restore financial balance without sacrificing workers or pushing the legal age beyond 62.
First, actuarial projections show that a modest targeted increase of retirement contributions by 1.5% would immediately rebalance the accounts of both regimes (numerous simulation models attest to this).
Second, reform requires raising the real recovery rate from 75% to an objective of 90% to 95%, through the digitization of tax-social controls and renewed firmness on corporate arrears.
Third, the progressive formalization of the informal sector would allow hundreds of thousands of new contributors through a gradual modulation of the contribution level. Finally, a fundamental lever of social justice and financial yield lies in closing the gender pay gap. In Tunisia, the average wage gap against women is around 25%.
Closing this pay gap would mechanically increase the overall base of contributions in a substantial way, bringing new and sustainable revenues to the funds while strengthening the system’s equity.
Hédi Sraieb, PhD in Development Economics
