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Obama Announces $500 Million Loan Guarantee Support to Tunisia

Obama Announces $500 Million Loan Guarantee Support to Tunisia

From USA Today

President Obama announced on Friday that the U.S. will provide $500 million in new loan guarantees to help Tunisia revive an economy that continues to struggle more than three years after the Arab Spring began there.

The loan guarantee will allow Tunisia to get financing in the international capital markets at favorable rates.

“The United States has a huge investment in making sure that Tunisia’s experiment is successful,” Obama said in announcing the loan guarantees. “And we want nothing more than Tunisians to determine their own destiny, for the economic reforms to take place to allow Tunisia to be not just self-sufficient but thriving in the world economy.”

The announcement came as Obama met with Tunisia’s interim Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa in the Oval Office. Since the January 2011 revolution, the U.S. has committed more than $400 million in direct support to Tunisia’s transition, according to the White House.

The Obama administration also previously backed a $485 million loan guarantee to Tunisia in 2012.

While Tunisia has proven to be perhaps the most politically stable of the countries at the center of the Arab Spring revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East, its economy is hurting.

Read more at USA Today