A customer stands in front of empty shelves inside a supermarket in Tunis.
TUNIS:
Food shortages are worsening in Tunisia with empty shelves in supermarkets and bakeries, fueling public discontent over high prices and the risk of unrest as the government tries to prevent a public financial crisis.
Shortages of sugar, cooking oil, milk and butter, coffee, tobacco and bottled water are common, with the situation appearing to be worse in poorer areas farther from the capital.
Street tea seller Mustafa Dahech, 82, said he relies on sugar to create the sweet drink he sells in paper cups from metal teapots as he wanders through the narrow alleys of a poor district in Tunis .
“There’s no sugar. I swear to you there isn’t,” he said, making it difficult for him to increase his income beyond his $55-a-month pension.
Small protests have taken place and the head of the powerful main labor union, UGTT, has repeatedly warned in recent months of a “revolution of the hungry”.
The shortage is partly due to global commodity price squeezes and increases due to disruptions related to the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
FINANCIAL FINANCES
However, Tunisia could face increased disruption as a weak fiscal position makes it more difficult to buy staples at high international rates and sell them domestically with the same subsidies. level to which the country has applied.
The government is seeking an International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout to help finance its budget and repay its debt, but support will likely depend on cuts to regional subsidies and wages. as well as restructuring state-owned companies.
Negotiations between the government and the UGTT to agree on those reforms – a condition that could be IMF support – remain at an impasse.
Without the IMF bailout, Tunisia would likely have to borrow internally, restricting credit to local businesses in a way that diplomats say could further harm the economy or use the country’s foreign exchange reserves, harming the dinar and increasing inflation.
The government has blamed the shortfall on a squeeze in global goods and on domestic hoarders and speculators, and denied it faced problems paying for imports.
Earlier this year, UGTT said the government was having difficulty paying for wheat imports. The World Bank, the European Union, Japan and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have all given Tunisia food aid loans this year.
Dairy producers have asked for state support for feed inflation and other operating costs that they blame for milk and butter shortages.
A UGTT official said sugar shortages had caused shutdowns at some food factories. Workers at a carbonated beverage factory last week protested about the threat to their jobs.
Shortages of coffee, which is divided by one pack per customer in some stores, have also resulted in some cafes closing temporarily.
“We are a coffee shop. We have nothing but coffee to offer our customers,” Noureddine Ben Hsan, owner of the Independence cafe in Tunis, added that the scarcity of coffee, milk and The road forced him to close.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and was automatically generated from the syndication feed.)
