Tunisia is judged by agencies far away that understand it poorly. It is time to build that judgement closer to home.
Tunisia's access to finance, and the price it pays for it, rests heavily on the verdicts of a handful of foreign rating agencies. Their downgrades carry real weight, and their models often miss the texture of a country they assess from a distance. The result is borrowing costs set by outsiders with limited insight.
A national, or better a regional, credit rating capability would not end that dependence overnight. It would build expertise at home, give local lenders and investors a more textured read of Tunisian risk, and over time offer a counterweight to judgements made elsewhere.
The idea has precedent. Other emerging economies have pursued it. For Tunisia, where the cost of capital is itself a development problem, building the institutions to assess its own risk is a modest, sensible act of sovereignty.
