The volume of private investment approved by the Agency for the Promotion of Agricultural Investment (APIA) (Category B, i.e. worth over 60 thousand dinars) and Category C (worth more than 225 thousand dinars), have reached 480.9 million Tunisian dinars (MTD) until end November, 2015 against 467.4 MTD in the same period in 2014, up 2.8%.
According to APIA statistics, investment in the sector of integrated processing went up 393% until November 2015 to 40.5 MTD from 8.2 MTD in the same period in 2014.
In the fisheries sector, investment has increased by 22.8% from 24.6 MTD in 2014 to 30.2 MTD in 2015, thanks to the efforts made for the upgrade of fishing units in Bizerte, Monastir, Sfax, Mahdia and Medenine.
APIA has approved 11 investment projects with foreign shareholding with a value of 14.2 MTD that have generated 226 permanent jobs, according to the agency.
However, APIA statistics showed that investment of agricultural development and valorization companies (French: SMVDA) fell from 48.6% in 2014 to 14.1 MTD in 2015.
Regarding investment of large farmers (over 1 MTD), APIA has approved 65 investment projects until the end of 2015, with a value of 176.8 MTD against 60 projects worth 197.6 MTD, carried out in poultry farming and aquaculture.
Moreover, agricultural services co-operatives have seen their investment drop from 8.2 MTD in 2014 to 7.4 MTD in 2015.
However, investment made by new promoters have increased by 3.4% to 24 MTD at end November 2015, while the financing rate of agricultural investment by banks does not exceed 12.5% in 2015 against 14.3% in 2014.
APIA statistics also show that the overall investment approved will help create 4,743 permanent jobs, including 293 for university graduates.
