🇹🇳TunisiaNorth Africa
Tunisian Parliament debates new loan for phosphate rail modernization amid sector challenges
via Business News6 min read
The Tunisian Parliament is reviewing a 153 million dinar loan from the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development AFESD to modernize railway lines for phosphate transport. This initiative, debated on April 21, 2026, aims to renew and upgrade rail infrastructure in Gabès, Gafsa, and Sfax, covering approximately 190.5 kilometers of tracks. While the loan seeks to streamline phosphate delivery, reduce logistics costs, and enhance competitiveness, parliamentary discussions have highlighted deeper, persistent issues within the phosphate sector. During commission hearings, leaders from the Gafsa Phosphate Company CPG and the Tunisian Chemical Group GCT emphasized the urgent need for comprehensive upgrades across production, transport, and processing. However, deputies raised concerns about the effectiveness of previous loans and the absence of a clear, integrated recovery strategy. The Director General of CPG acknowledged that past investments had not yielded expected results and admitted to a lack of a clear program for renewing the phosphate wagon fleet. A significant point of contention was the discrepancy in production figures for 2025; CPG reported 3.9 million tons, while the President of the Finance and Budget Committee, Maher Kettari, cited figures closer to one million tons. This disparity raises questions about transparency and the economic rationale for investing heavily in rail transport if production remains low. The GCT's Director General also revealed that the grou
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Must ReadThe investigative media outlet Inkyfada is indirectly involved in a judicial procedure as its publishing association, Al Khatt, faces a request for dissolution. This request will be examined on May 11, 2026, by the Court of First Instance of Tunis. Al Khatt, founded in December 2013 under Decree-Law 88 on associations, announced the development in a statement on Tuesday, April 21. The association states that since its inception, it has conducted public interest activities, including media education, supporting the associative sector, and backing independent journalism. It initiated the "Jaridaty" project and has published Inkyfada since 2014. According to Al Khatt, since late 2023, it has faced a series of banking, administrative, and judicial measures. The association claims to have responded to all official requests, providing required documents and exercising legal remedies. However, Al Khatt believes these measures have progressively exceeded a simple compliance check, citing repeated blockages of its funding, sometimes for several months, and an increase in procedures that strain its resources. These difficulties have reportedly impacted its teams, leading to salary delays, deteriorating working conditions, and reduced social benefits, including for Inkyfada journalists. Al Khatt also asserts that some financial operations were obstructed without clear written justification, despite being declared and documented. It sought explanations from the Central Bank of Tunisia bu
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Must ReadA message posted on X by an account named Stern Drew, who claims to be a cryptocurrency expert, recently caused concern by asserting that COVID-19 booster shots contain "eight complete fragments of HIV" designed to block white blood cell production. The post, shared hundreds of times, alleged that these vaccines are a "biological weapon" responsible for rapid cancers, immune collapse, and sudden deaths in previously healthy individuals. This alarming publication was presented as proof of a global health conspiracy. However, these claims are false and constitute misinformation that has been widely documented since the beginning of the pandemic. The idea that COVID-19 vaccines contain HIV fragments is not based on credible scientific evidence. It recycles an old rumor from 2020, based on a misinterpretation of a scientific work that was later retracted. The origin of this misinformation dates back to a preprint published in early February 2020 on the bioRxiv platform, a non-peer-reviewed document, which claimed to have identified short amino acid sequences in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein that resembled certain sequences present in HIV proteins. This hypothesis was quickly picked up by sites known for spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation, then amplified on social media. However, this study was criticized by many researchers in virology and genetics, who highlighted that the compared sequences were extremely short, making such correspondences statistically frequent an