On January 29, five new concession contracts for electricity production from renewables were submitted to the Tunisian parliament for approval in Tunisia. The five solar plants would add roughly 598 megawatts of capacity and carry an estimated $560m investment, making the vote a test of who will control a large share of new solar generation.
Khobna and Mezzouna in Sidi Bouzid, El Ksour and Sagdoud in Gafsa, and Menzel Habib in Gabes are the sites named in the contracts. The projects would go to foreign multinationals.
STEG and foreign multinationals
On April 21, the Electricity and Gas Federation held an urgent news conference and argued that the concessions would reduce STEG to a mere grid operator. The federation said electricity production would be handed to foreign companies, while infrastructure costs would be paid by the public and profits would leave with the corporations.
That dispute goes to the structure of the contracts, not just their size. If parliament approves the concessions in their current form, STEG would keep the network role but lose production space to private operators in a sector the federation says should not be shifted so far out of public hands.
Tunisian Economic Observatory objections
The Tunisian Economic Observatory said the five concessions would benefit from extensive tax exemptions and stabilisation clauses, and that the contracts could undermine Tunisia's fiscal sovereignty. The observatory also said there would be no meaningful technology transfer, weak local integration, and limited employment opportunities.
It also reported that carbon credits generated through emissions reductions on Tunisian territory could be transferred to the multinationals rather than remaining a public asset. Last year, the Electricity and Gas Federation organised a strike denouncing the transfer of carbon credits to private developers.
Tunisian parliament decision
The immediate next step is parliamentary approval, which will determine whether the five contracts move forward as written or face changes before they can shape Tunisia's renewable buildout. For companies, workers, and consumers watching the file, the decision is not only about new solar capacity; it is about how far public control extends once generation is handed to foreign operators and whether the terms on taxes, credits and ownership stay intact.
