The soaring prices of food products, more particularly fruits and vegetables as well as meats, amplified the perception of inflation among small and medium stock exchanges and complicated budget management a little more, especially during the month of Ramadan. which is almost at the gates. Curbing this surge has become an absolute imperative to preserve citizens’ purchasing power.
The price cap is slow to translate into tangible measures on the ground, a few weeks before the month of Ramadan. Faced with these tensions, the action launched by the government promises to be tough to say the least, which would eventually require moving up a gear, by stepping up price control operations and the fight once morest unauthorized points of sale. The Head of State has made it a priority, repeatedly calling for the permanent monitoring of the availability of food products in order to deal with any tension and shortage on the markets.
It is time to set the record straight and relieve the citizens confused by the logorrhea of outlandish promises from certain officials, while inflation is frightening and the chains are getting longer everywhere day by day to obtain the basic foodstuffs.
For months we have been promising citizens to put an end to shortages, for months we have been promising to bring order to the prices of meat and other products, for months we have been talking regarding attacking speculators … and so far, nothing has changed.
In short, soaring consumer product prices are no longer an economic instability in Tunisia. It becomes problematic and stressful for a very large segment of low-income citizens to obtain enough to ensure the minimum subsistence for their families in view of the prices of basic essential food products which rise every day without any consideration, thus striking full force a good part of the population which consequently sees its purchasing power being eroded.
This situation is, today, at the origin of a discontent citizen who has not yet said his word. Worse, the government’s silence in the face of these slippages in the prices of basic necessities is fueling collective anxiety. The consequences of this situation plunge citizens into disarray where the month of Ramadan in Tunisia rhymes with high cost of living, inflation, poverty…
