Market brief
Tunisia
The authorities that procure water infrastructure in Tunisia, how the deals are put together, and what is in the pipeline.
Reference profile for TunisiaMarket snapshot
The commercial picture in Tunisia: the scale of the economy and the water sector, the investment climate, and where the near-term activity is concentrated.
Political stability
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Percentile among all countries; higher is more stable.
Investment climate
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Regulatory quality for private investment; higher is better.
Financing & PPP
- PPP frameworkEmerging
- Tracked pipelineUS$ 1.1 bn in our projects register
- Active fundersWorld Bank, AfDB
- Climate adaptation planAdopted (2022)
Opportunities
- Seawater & brackish desalination (Sfax, Djerba, Zarat)
- Treated-wastewater reuse expansion
- Network rehabilitation & NRW reduction
- Solar desalination for the south
Key challenges
- Below the absolute-scarcity line
- North–south imbalance
- Salinity of southern groundwater
- Ageing networks & high losses
Sources: FAO AQUASTAT / national reports (latest available); World Bank 2023–24. Figures approximate. Governance indicators: World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (2024).
Contracting authorities
The bodies that commission, regulate and operate water infrastructure in Tunisia. Ministries set policy and sign the offtake; utilities run the assets; regulators set the tariff and the service standard.
- Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources & FisheriesMinistry
- ONASUtility
- SONEDEUtility
- DG Water Resources (DGRE)Basin & resources authority
- DG Rural Engineering & Water Exploitation (DGGREE)Irrigation & drainage
How deals are structured
The framework in Tunisia is Emerging, the schemes we track carry US$ 1.1 bn of disclosed value, and the funders most active in the sector are World Bank, AfDB, KfW, AFD.
Delivery splits by asset class across the region: dams and trunk conveyance are mostly engineering contracts carried by sovereign or development-bank finance; bulk supply increasingly uses build-operate-transfer concessions against a long-term offtake; and distribution work is let as performance-based contracts paid against measured leakage reduction. The Finance & Economics hub sets out each model and where it has been used.
How to bid
Tunisia buys water infrastructure through its two national utilities, SONEDE for drinking water and desalination and ONAS for sanitation, under the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries, which signs the tariff order and brought the Sfax plant into service.12 The partnership framework rests on Law 2015-49 as amended in 2019, alongside the 2008 concession law.
| Procuring body | SONEDE for drinking water and desalination; ONAS for wastewater; the ministry above both.12 |
|---|---|
| Reference transaction | The Gargour plant at Sfax entered service on 18 June 2026: 100,000 cubic metres a day, expandable to 250,000, with Japanese cooperation financing and an updated estimated cost of about TND 1.18 billion. It frees roughly 700 litres a second previously routed to Greater Sfax.2 |
The procurement mechanics a bidder needs, meaning the TUNEPS portal, the thirty-day advertisement rule and the registration documents a foreign supplier must file, appeared only in search summaries and are not printed here until the underlying pages can be read. Local content, payment security, dispute forum, foreign ownership limits and withholding tax were not established.
Regulatory intelligence
| Regulation | Status | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Water Code | Under revision | 1975/2019 | 1975 code in force; draft law 66/2019 still being revised in 2026. |
| Emergency drought measures | Episodic | 2023– | Quotas and rotational supply in dry years. |
| Reuse standards (NT 106.03) | In force | 1989/2018 | Long-standing agricultural reuse classes. |
| Desalination programme | Active | 2020s | Sousse/Sfax/Zarat plants via DFI finance. |
Primary references: the Ministry of Agriculture, SONEDE and ONAS.
Projects
Tracked schemes in Tunisia, largest first. Each has its own page with the parties, the finance and a dated history.
33 tracked in total. The full set, filterable, is in the major projects register.
Track record
What has actually been signed in Tunisia, from the awards log and the major projects register.
Disclosed value by year
US$ bn of tracked awards in Tunisia carrying a published value
2 further awards in this sector carry no published value and are not in the chart.
| Year | Project | Winning firms | US$ m |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 on line | ONAS Tunis Nord Sanitation Concession | Agua Services d'Assainissement, a consortium of Maghrebia Technologies and Travaux, Tuniber, Aguas de Portugal and Aguas de Portugal International | n/a |
| 2023 on line | ONAS Southern Sanitation Concession | SCAST, the concession company formed by SUEZ (80 per cent), Segor and groupe SCET (12 per cent) and BIAT | 220 |
| 2021 | Sfax (Gargour) Desalination | Tedagua, Metito, Orascom Construction | n/a |
| 2019 on line | Zarat Desalination | VA Tech Wabag | 105 |
| 2018 on line | Djerba Desalination | Aqualia and GS Inima joint venture | 81 |
| 2016 on line | Mellègue Supérieur Dam | Chinese companies, not named in the source | 92 |
Years without a label are award years from the curated log; rows marked on line are dated by commissioning, from the projects register. 6 rows in total for Tunisia.
Pipeline & tenders
Structured procurements and live tenders in Tunisia, drawn from the same review that maintains the pipeline tracker.
Pipeline & awards
Tenders
Prices
What households pay
| Household tariff (US$/m³) | Cost of supply (US$/m³) | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.065 – 0.75 | not published | 2024 | Ministerial arrêté, JORT no. 033 of 1 March 2024, applying to bills issued from that date |
Six quarterly blocks, excluding VAT: TND 0.200/m³ to 20 m³, 0.740 to 40, 1.040 to 70, 1.490 to 100, 1.770 to 150 and 2.310 above it. Tourist use pays the top rate from the first cubic metre. A mid-range household sits in the 1.040 block.
Residential tariffs, and the cost of supply where a utility publishes it, are kept in one place for the whole region so the comparison holds: a tariff means little without the cost it is measured against.
Watch list
No dated items have been carried forward for Tunisia yet. This section fills from the monthly briefings as they are published.
Sources
7 references
Project, pipeline and tender records are compiled from procurer announcements, lender disclosures and trade reporting; each project page carries its own source and the date it was last checked. Institutions are from the decision-maker directory. Economic and water indicators are cited on the reference profile.
- Tuniscope, the new drinking water tariffs, reporting the ministerial order published in JORT no. 033 of 1 March 2024.
- African Manager, inauguration of the Sfax desalination plant, 23 June 2026.
- FAO, AQUASTAT — Global Information System on Water and Agriculture: country water resources, withdrawals by sector and dam register. fao.org/aquastat. Latest country values as compiled at build.
- World Bank, World Development Indicators and country water-sector reporting. data.worldbank.org.
- Kaufmann & Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators (World Bank), 2024 update — political-stability and regulatory-quality scores, 0–100, shown in the market snapshot. worldbank.org/wgi.
- World Resources Institute, Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Atlas (2023) — the sub-basin risk, stress and groundwater-decline layers on the interactive maps. wri.org/aqueduct.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Numbered references are linked from the superscript markers in the text. Figures without a marker come from the sources above as compiled in the site methodology.