- Tunisia: Tunisia's Ministry for International Cooperation and Foreign Investment has announced that Tunisia attracted 1.1 billion dinars ($850 million) in 2000 in foreign direct investment. This is twice the amount recorded for the previous year (488 million dinars in 1999). The energy sector alone attracted 320 million dinars. This exceptional rise is also due to the sale of two cement factories to Spanish and Portuguese investors for the sum of 362 million dinars. The manufacturing industries, for their part, generated investment by way of $310 million in 2000 as opposed to 198 million the year before, that is a rise of 57%. For the current year, the Tunisian government is tabling on FDI of 900 million dinars and will seek to attract investors from Asia and North America in addition to those of the EU, the country's main partner with 1,833 companies present in the country.