The seven personal payments a Tunisian bank may send to Australia

Tunisian exchange law names the payments a bank may send abroad one by one, then stops. The seven covering a person's private affairs are printed below in full. No gift, no family support and no savings transfer to a relative appears among them, and that absence decides this corridor.

Key Takeaways

• Article 1 of the exchange code frees transfers for current operations and for the net proceeds of capital invested through an importation of foreign currency. Everything else is an export of capital needing the Minister of Finance's general authorisation.
• Article 12 bis of decree 77-608 defines current operations by enumeration, and its personal section runs to seven lines.
• The only family money on those seven lines is maintenance owed under a judicial decision.
• Article 12 ter lets the central bank delegate transfer allowances to banks for six purposes, all of them activities: a stay abroad for tourism, business, schooling, training, an internship or treatment. None is a payment made because somebody abroad needs money.
• A maintenance beneficiary in Australia has to keep supplying certificates, renewed every year, for the payments to continue.

The two things that are free, and everything else

The governing statute is the exchange and foreign trade code, law 76-18 of 21 January 1976. Its first article, as given by the amending law of 3 May 1993, frees transfers abroad for two things: current operations entered into in accordance with the legislation governing them, and the real net proceeds of the sale or liquidation of capital invested by means of an importation of foreign currency, even where those proceeds exceed the capital originally invested.

Then it closes the door on everything else. Any export of capital, and any operation from which a transfer arises or may arise, other than those in the first paragraph, is subject to a general authorisation of the Minister of Finance given after the Central Bank's opinion, granted under article 12 of decree 77-608 by an exchange notice. So a payment is one of the two free categories, or an export of capital needing a minister's instrument. There is no third.

The seven personal lines

Article 12 bis of decree 77-608, added in August 1993, defines current operations. Its section I, on operations of a personal character, runs to seven lines. They are numbered as they appear; the circular's separately numbered items, below, are a different list:

Read it for the ordinary case and it is not there. No gift, no family support, no savings remittance. A parent in Tunis helping an adult child in Melbourne with the rent is describing something the decree does not name.

The article ends with a catch-all, allowing any other operation which by its nature may be considered similar to those above. That reads like a way through, and at a bank counter it is not. Circular 2016-9 of 30 December 2016 is what the banks work from, and its Annexe 1 sets out the operations an authorised intermediary may execute and the documents for each, other than categories governed by their own circulars. Section K runs from item 1 to 16 and stops, with nothing mirroring the catch-all.

So the rule is not that no route exists, but that none exists a bank can take on its own. The payment stops at the counter unless somebody applies.

Who the applying is done to, and for what

Two authorisation regimes sit behind that counter, answering different questions. The general authorisations article 1 speaks of are the Minister's, taking the form of an exchange notice: general in application rather than a decision on one file. A current operation the central bank has not delegated is decided by the central bank itself. Its catalogue lists seventeen headings a person may apply under, and reserves the right to authorise or reject. The heading closest in name is relief or travel costs for a foreign student studying in Tunisia, which is not family support at all: it lets that student send money back out, against proof of what they brought in over the previous year. There is no heading for a resident sending family money abroad.

Why no allowance was ever created for it

The obvious question is whether the central bank has set an allowance for family money, as many countries do. It has not, and article 12 ter shows the delegation power was never extended that far. That article, as amended on 26 February 2007, provides that circulars of the Central Bank of Tunisia may fix, as allowances or percentages, the amounts whose transfer is delegated to authorised intermediaries for costs of a stay abroad for tourism, business, schooling, vocational training, an internship and medical care.

Six purposes, every one an activity being funded rather than a person helped. The article is permissive rather than prohibitive, so it forbids nothing by itself. What it does is mark the boundary of what banks may be handed, and a payment made because a relative needs money has never been inside it. With article 1, whose freedom for current operations reaches only those the legislation names, and article 12 bis, which does not name family support, that is why no Tunisian family-aid figure exists to find. No allowance was ever delegated, and that is what leaves the payment stranded at the counter.

The one family line, and what it asks of the person in Australia

Maintenance is the exception, and its documentary recipe is what a recipient experiences. Item 5 of section K requires three things: a judgment bearing the Tunisian enforcement order where a foreign court pronounced it, stating the amount payable to the children or former spouse; a certificate of life and a certificate of residence abroad for each beneficiary, renewable annually; and, where the former spouse is the beneficiary, an attestation of non-remarriage or equivalent, also renewable annually.

That is a source-country rule landing as a recurring obligation on somebody in Australia. The payments continue not because a court ordered them but because the beneficiary keeps proving, once a year, that they are alive, that they live where the file says, and in the former-spouse case that they have not remarried. A lapsed file stops the transfer at the Tunisian bank, invisibly from here until the money does not arrive.

Neighbouring items carry their own timing. Life annuities under item 6 need a residence certificate issued not more than three months before the transfer; item 4 pensions a statement signed by a social security fund. Debt repayments need a judgment or award, item 7 requiring the Tunisian enforcement order where the judgment is foreign, item 8 always.

The one recurring channel that does exist

One route does let a Tunisian household send money to a relative in Australia month after month, and it exists because of what that relative is doing. Circular 2025-10 of 5 September 2025 governs transfers for study abroad. Its article 5 sets an installation allowance of at most six thousand dinars per academic year and a living-cost allowance of at most four thousand a month during it, that second one reduced by any scholarship, with the file domiciled at a single authorised intermediary. A student in Australia is reachable. A graduate who stays on is not: the allowance attached to the enrolment.

What happens to the proceeds of a Tunisian asset

This case turns on nationality, and runs opposite to expectation. Article 15 bis of decree 77-608 gives non-resident natural persons holding Tunisian nationality the benefit of resident status for dealing with Tunisian property, securities and shares, then subjects them, for those operations, to the obligations attaching to that status. The transfer freedom itself comes from article 1 of the exchange code, conditioned on the capital having been brought in as foreign currency. Articles 20 and 21 of the decree, which decide whether an acquisition or disposal needs authorisation at all, are written for a non-resident of foreign nationality.

Proceeds belonging to a non-resident of foreign nationality, where the capital was not brought in as foreign currency, land under the 1982 exchange notice on non-resident accounts. Its chapter V creates the Capital account, in the notice's words for assets and securities of people residing outside Tunisia who enjoy no transfer guarantee. A sum credited loses its original character for regulatory purposes, and every permitted debit stays inside Tunisia. None is a transfer abroad, and any other debit needs a specific central bank authorisation.

Which code is actually in force

A new exchange code has been drafted, and it is easy to read about it as though it had passed. It has not, at least not as at the date of this guide. The central bank's circular 2026-4 of 26 March 2026 recites the instruments it acts under: the 1976 code as subsequently amended, and decree 77-608 as modified, naming the 2017 governmental decree.

Where to look next

• Receiving money from Tunisia - the dinar to Australian dollar corridor page.
• AUD to TND - the convert page for the pair.
• How international transfers work - the sequence a payment moves through once the Tunisian end is settled.
• Understanding transfer fees - the cost of a transfer.

Sources

• Reglementation des changes, recueil de textes, Banque Centrale de Tunisie - the consolidated collection, updated April 2022: law 76-18, article 1 as given by law 93-48 of 1993; decree 77-608, articles 12, 12 bis, 12 ter, 15 bis, 20 and 21; exchange notice 5 of 1982, chapter V.
• Circulaire aux Intermediaires Agrees n° 2016-9 du 30 decembre 2016, Banque Centrale de Tunisie - articles 1 and 2, their exclusion of categories governed by their own regulations, and Annexe 1 section K items 4 to 8.
• Circulaire aux Intermediaires Agrees n° 2025-10 du 5 septembre 2025, Banque Centrale de Tunisie - article 5 on the two study allowances and the scholarship reduction to the living-cost one, with article 8's single intermediary.
• Liste des documents a fournir pour une Autorisation de Transfert, Banque Centrale de Tunisie - the seventeen authorisations, the reserved right to authorise or refuse, and the foreign-student entry with its documented-receipts requirement.
• Circulaire aux Intermediaires Agrees n° 2026-4 du 26 mars 2026, Banque Centrale de Tunisie - the bank's recital of the instruments in force, naming the 1976 code and decree 77-608 with the 2017 governmental decree among its amendments.

General information about how Tunisian exchange regulation treats money leaving for somebody in Australia. Whether a payment falls inside the enumeration, and what a maintenance file requires, are questions for a lawyer in Tunisia and the paying bank. Not financial advice, not tax advice, not a recommendation of any product or institution. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.