The International Monetary Fund on Friday approved the payment of a $250 million tranche, the fourth from Tunisia’s loan program tied to economic reforms aimed at keeping its deficit under control, the fund said. The tranche brings disbursements so far under the four-year program to $1.139 billion, the fund said in statement. The program agreement reached in 2016 is worth about $2.8 billion. The IMF has stepped up the number of payments to Tunisia to $1 billion a year, but has imposed a series of reforms, including a review of the subsidy system, pressure on wage expenditures, reform of the social fund system, relief from the public sector and reduction of the budget deficit. The Fund is demanding that wage expenditures be reduced from more than 14 percent of gross domestic product to 12 percent, as well as reducing the number of staff from approximately 630,000 currently to 500,000 by 2020. Since the “Arab Spring” revolts took place in 2011, successive governments in Tunisia have failed to trim its fiscal deficit and create economic growth. The IMF said in May that anchoring inflation expectations through additional rate increases would be crucial if price pressures did not moderate quickly. The IMF also predicted that the Tunisian economy would grow by 2.4 percent this year and would rise to 2.9 percent in 2019, but said that growth would not be enough to affect unemployment, which would remain at 15 percent during the year. It also provided optimistic forecasts for economic inflation, indicating that it would stabilize at 6.5 percent this year and fall to 5.9 per cent in 2019. The government forecasts the budget deficit to fall to 4.9 percent of gross domestic product in 2018 from about an estimated 6.5 percent in 2017. It aims to raise GDP growth to about 3 percent next year from 2.3 percent last year. The Tunisian economy needs about three billion dollars for 2018 alone to be able to achieve financial balance.