Five weeks after publication in the Official Journal, Tunisia's Decree 148 of 2026 on small honour-based financing is moving into execution. The change that matters to anyone planning to apply is procedural: the application does not go to a branch counter. The Central Bank of Tunisia has directed banks to stand up secure electronic platforms dedicated to these applications, with actual lending expected from early September 2026 according to banking-law academic Mohamed Nakhili.
Key Highlights
- Decree 148 of 2026 is dated 23 July 2026 and was published in the Official Journal on 24 July 2026.
- Ceilings: 5,000 dinars for individuals covering consumption needs, 10,000 dinars for small-project owners, 25,000 dinars for small and medium enterprises and community companies.
- No interest, no guarantees or sureties of any kind, and no file-study fees.
- Decision deadline: ten banking working days from filing, with a written and reasoned notification if refused.
- Maximum financing term of six years, with a grace period of up to six months.
- No new financing is granted until the previous one is repaid in full.
What Actually Changed
The gap between what circulated in July and what is happening now is procedural, not financial. The amounts did not move. The way in did.
The Central Bank's direction is that each bank dedicates a secure electronic platform through which the customer files and tracks an application, replacing direct filing at branches. The stated aim is threefold: guarantee equal treatment and prevent discrimination between customers, timestamp every filing precisely, and stop the same application being lodged across several branches or several banks. The platforms carry mandatory fields, including the bank account number, which allows tracking through the Central Bank's credit risk registry.
In practice, touring the branches will move nobody up the queue. Ordering will be settled by a timestamp, not by a relationship with a branch.
What the Decree Provides
The text sets three beneficiary categories and three ceilings. Individuals up to 5,000 dinars for consumption needs. Small-project owners up to 10,000 dinars, a small project being defined as one whose total investment does not exceed 150,000 dinars including working capital. Small and medium enterprises and community companies up to 25,000 dinars.
The decree also requires banks to direct at least 50 percent of the funds available under this line towards SMEs and community companies, so consumer lending is not the mechanism's main destination. It further requires each bank to open a dedicated account in its books named the "honour financing line account" to manage these lines.
What It Means for Banks
This is not a voluntary programme. It derives from Article 412 ter of the Commercial Code, introduced by Law 41 of 2024 of 2 August 2024 as part of the cheque-law overhaul, which obliges every bank to allocate at least eight percent of the year's profits to short-term financing lines carrying no interest and no guarantees. The newspaper Lexpert puts the total size of the mechanism at between 100 and 126 million dinars a year.
The part that lands on bank technology teams is more explicit than it looks: a public secure intake portal, normalised mandatory fields, an uncontestable timestamp, duplicate detection across branches, a link into the credit risk registry, and a ten banking working day decision deadline that has to be met and evidenced. Those are the specifications of an application-processing system, not of a form page. Lexpert also raises legal and accounting reservations about the text, among them the calculation of the eight percent on 2025 profits already distributed, and the absence of a settled accounting treatment for the allocated amounts.
What It Means for Applicants
Waiting for the platforms to open does not stop the file being prepared. The application itself is a written request addressed to the bank, stating the applicant's capacity, the amount in figures and in words, its purpose, and the bank account details. Anyone who assembles those elements in advance files on day one, not in week three.
Noqta's honour-loan request tool produces the request in the form circulating under Decree 148, ready to print or to copy into the bank's platform once it opens.
For anyone applying on behalf of a company, obligations do not end at the financing: see e-invoicing in Tunisia and its penalties and the El Fatoora TTN registration guide.
What's Next
The indicator worth watching in September is not public statements but the platforms themselves: which bank opens first, whether the required-documents list is published before or after opening, and whether the ten banking working day deadline holds on the first wave of applications. No Central Bank circular carrying a specific reference on these platforms has been published to date. What the Tunisian press has reported is the substance of the direction, not its text.
Noqta builds intake and processing portals of exactly this shape: mandatory fields, timestamping, duplicate detection, measurable decision deadlines, and integration with existing systems. If this work has landed on you with a short deadline, ask for a technical diagnostic before the tool gets chosen.
Source: African Manager