A customer stands in front of empty shelves in a supermarket in Tunis.
TUNIS:
Food shortages are increasing in Tunisia with empty shelves in supermarkets and bakeries, adding to popular discontent over high prices and the risk of unrest as the government tries to avert a crisis in public finances.
There are widespread shortages of sugar, cooking oil, milk and butter, coffee, tobacco and bottled water, and the situation seems worse in poorer regions far from the capital.
Street tea vendor Mustafa Dahech, 82, said he relied on sugar to make the sweet drink he sells in paper cups from a metal teapot as he wanders the narrow alleys of a poor neighborhood in Tunis.
“There’s no sugar. I swear there isn’t any,” he said, making it harder for him to raise his income beyond his $55 a month state pension.
Small protests have already taken place and the head of the powerful main union, the UGTT, has repeatedly warned of a “revolution of the hungry” in recent months.
The shortages are partly due to a global scarcity of raw materials and price increases due to disruptions related to the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
PRECARE FINANCE
However, Tunisia could face more disruption as its weak fiscal position makes it more difficult to buy staples at high international rates and sell them internally at the same subsidized rate it was already using.
The government is seeking bailout of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fund its budget and debt repayments, but aid is likely to depend on subsidies and cuts in public sector wages, and restructuring of state-owned companies.
Talks between the government and the UGTT to agree on those reforms – a likely precondition for IMF support – are still stalled.
Without an IMF bailout, Tunisia would likely have to borrow internally, limiting lending to local businesses in ways diplomats say could further harm the economy, use its foreign exchange reserves, hurt the dinar and increase inflation.
The government has attributed the shortages to global scarcity of raw materials and to domestic hoarders and speculators, and has denied it has any problems paying for imports.
The UGTT said earlier this year that the government was struggling to pay for wheat imports. The World Bank, the European Union, Japan and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development have all provided food aid loans to Tunisia this year.
Dairy producers have demanded state aid for the inflation of feed and other operating costs, which they blame for shortages of milk and butter.
A UGTT official has said the sugar shortage has led to breakdowns at several food factories. Workers at a soft drink factory protested last week against the threat to their jobs.
Shortages of coffee, which is rationed to one pack per customer in some stores, have also led to some temporary cafe closures.
“We are a cafe. We have nothing to offer our customers but coffee,” said Noureddine Ben Hsan, owner of the Independence cafe in Tunis, adding that the coffee, milk and sugar shortages had forced him to close.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)