Competitive Performance of the Olive Oil in Tunisia

The economic world knew a new current which aims to economic opening and the elimination of the barriers which constitute an obstacle with the economic free trade such as the customs rates which are opposed to the commercial exchanges and the regulations which are opposed to the technology transfers. This current was materialized by the concept of universalization which put forward the requirements of the lifting of the barriers under indicated and by supporting the economic free trade there and constitutes a rupture with protectionism. 

In this new context, the Tunisian agricultural economics characterized by the protectionism of the State passed to the opening of the markets and the liberalization of the exchanges through an agricultural program of adjustment structural which primarily consists in reducing the subsidies to the inputs and a recourse more and more to the play of the offer and request for the fixing of the prices of the agricultural produce. 

To promote the competitive performances of its exported agricultural produce the Tunisian government took measures allowing controlling the production costs thus reinforcing competitiveness on the internal market and that external. But while reinforcing the competitiveness of the agricultural produce one risk to weaken it by the overexploitation of the factors of production such as the consumption of the water of irrigation and the overexploitation of the arable land.

Tunisia as the majority of the countries in the process of development is confronted with the paradox: protected its local resources having undergone a rupture from balances between the equipments and the needs on the one hand and the improvement for the competitiveness of its agricultural produce dictated by savage competition in a world context on the other hand. 

Tunisia with limited natural resources adopted policies which aim at a good use of factors of agricultural production such as water and ensures a good management of the local resources thus, namely the invoicing policies of tariffing of the water of irrigation in order to minimize to see removing the subsidy of this factor of production.

 These measurements resulted in increases in the production costs of the principal exported agricultural produce. Downward trends of the performances competitivenesses of these products could be interpreted like the direct consequences of the increases observed in production costs. 

This paper seeks to consider the competitiveness total of the die olive oil by the means of the tool for analysis of the policies. For this purpose, it will be proceeded, in a first stage, with the development of a methodological step appropriate with the problem arising and, in a second phase, to the application of this step to Tunisian data.