Our trip to CEMAT was mainly to show us where the building was located. The building itself has quite the history. Originally an Italian household, it was taken over by the French and finally by the Tunisians. Now it’s on permanent lease to CEMAT. CEMAT stands for something along the lines of Center (for) Magrib Studies at Tunis. It’s a point of entry for researchers and scholars from the USA headed to North Africa. I’ll need to go back at some point to look up information on GCT.
The real point of interest on the outing was Amen Bank and our talk with several of the bank goons on the roll of a private bank in Tunisia. In the end, we found out that their motivation is purely one of profit. It’s not surprising, as it seems all businesses focus more and more on the bottom line as they get bigger and bigger. I was very interested in the way the bankers sidestepped our questions trying to pin them down on loans to the agricultural sector and small businesses. There is one bank in Tunisia, backed by the government, which is making small loans, but that’s not Amen bank! I never got around to asking my question to see if the bankers think that the growth Tunisia has seen since independence is sustainable and what sector of the economy will be the hottest in ten years.
It’s interesting to see that Amen Bank is giving priority to the service sector, even over the industrial sector now. They are actually reducing their holdings in industry in favor of services. It appears that Amen Bank thinks Tunisia will go the way of America, focusing on the services sector to the detriment of agriculture, real estate, and industry.
The only other thing of interest was the trophy of real-time banking which the goons so proudly displayed. Since I started my first savings account over 15 years ago, all of my banking has always been electronic and instantaneous. In Tunisia, this is the first foray into the world of digital banking and the death rattle of the banking paper trail. Long live 1’s and 0’s! Death to paper! Or so it seems the goons want us to believe. It’ll be interesting to see if Tunisians accept paperless banking and the seeming unaccountability of the system. Statistically, fewer errors are made with the computer than on paper, the traceability of transactions increases, and money flows much faster. Of course, its not the same as having a physical record which someone has to pull from a big file cabinet and write something in. Banking in Tunisia will never be the same.
All in all, it was a good visit. I hope we get the chance to visit a government controlled public bank before we leave to contrast between the two. Surely the public bank must look out for the best interests of the country rather than solely be motivated by profit. Right?
