Tunisia: Inflation Rises up to 6.3%

Business

May 7th, 8:51am

Tunis - Mongi Saidani

Collapsing tourism revenues, unemployment, militancy and social unrest have hammered Tunisia's economy [Zoubeir Souissi/Reuters]

Tunisia revealed that the inflation rate rose slightly to 6.3 percent in April, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INS). The inflation rate reached 6.2 percent in March and 5.8 percent in February. Government sources attributed the rise if inflation to several reasons, including the increase in fruit prices by 13.6 percent, fish by 11.1 percent, vegetables by 9.9 percent, and chocolate and confectionery by 8.8 percent. On the other hand, olive oil prices fell by 13.6 percent year-on-year. During the past four months, oil prices remained steady at TND5.6 (around USD2.8) due to the record 350,000 oil yield in Tunisia. Year-on-year, prices of manufactured goods went up 7.6 percent in April due to the increase in prices of household cleaning products by 7.7 percent and hygiene and personal care products by 10.1 percent. Several experts in the financial and economic fields affirmed that the COVID-19 had major economic repercussions, which led to the rise of in-demand food product prices. In a related context, Economist Ezzedine Saidane said that the loss of value in Tunisia is estimated at TND7.2 billion (around USD2.5 billion). This percentage might increase in case administrative establishments and economic institutions didn’t proceed with their operations. Saidane expected that economic activities to resume, at least partially. The Tunisian economy incurred a minimum of TND1.2 billion per week, Saidane said, attributing this to disruption of the public sector activity and halting exports to Europe. Meanwhile, the European Union allocated a loan to Tunisia of around EUR600 million in efforts to help neighboring countries fight the pandemic.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/2271901/tunisia-inflation-rises-63