Is shortage of daily bread in Tunisia a ‘fabricated crisis’?

A bread shortage has again erupted in Tunisia, causing long queues at bakeries nationwide, amid accusations by President Kais Saied against “cartels” for creating this socioeconomic crisis.

Social media users and local media published photos showing long lines at the subsidized bakeries over the past few days, a phenomenon described by Minister of Trade and Export Development Kalthoum Ben Rejeb as “strange.”

In an interview with Tunisian newspaper Al Chourouk published on July 31, Ben Rejeb noted that the demand for bread exceeds availability, adding that her ministry increased the amounts of basic commodities like sugar and flour by 1,400,000 quintals (one quintal equals to about 45 kilograms). 

President Saied warned that “bread is a red line for Tunisians, and those who tamper with it will not escape punishment.” He accused the bodies charged with monitoring prices of not performing their required role.

“The prices are increasing abnormally,” the president said, and he ordered that committees be established inside each concerned institution to review all appointments after he accused “cartels” of manipulating and stealing the subsidized baking materials to produce high-priced pastries.

“Regardless of the existence of classified and unclassified bakeries, there is only one bread for Tunisians [...] Having bread for the poor and bread for the rich is a twisted way to lift subsidies on grain,” he said.

The classified bakeries sell subsidized bread for 190 milim ($0.06) while the unclassified bakeries sell unsubsidized bread at higher prices, between 800 milim and 1 dinar ($0.26-$0.32), which the poor are unable to afford.

Saied added that the selling of unsubsidized bread should stop, as there are those who circumvent the ban on selling subsidized flour to the unclassified bakeries. 

“At the classified bakeries, there are those who wait for three hours, and then they have been told that the bread has run out. When they go to the unclassified bakeries, they find the bread priced at 800 milim and a dinar, after adding a few olives or onions. This means that there is bread for the poor but it is not there, while bread for the rich is available,” Saied noted.

“The poor became supporting the rich! There is only one bread for Tunisians, and this situation cannot continue,” he said, adding that the grain crisis is “fabricated.”

Tunisia has 3,337 classified bakeries, including 270 that are not provided with flour due to charges of manipulation, in addition to 1,443 unclassified bakeries.

Tunisian political expert Bassel Al Turgoman told Jusoor Post that there are some political parties that seek to manipulate bread to “make people hungry” and then revolt against the president. However, he added that those parties failed to do so because the Tunisian people stopped supporting them.

“We, like other Mediterranean nations, depend on bread as a basic commodity and [the parties] try to create crises in Tunisia to make a public revolution. [However,] they don’t understand that their attempts were unsuccessful,” Al Turgoman said, noting that the situation in Tunisia started to ease following Saied’s decision, as the unclassified bakeries were monitored and banned from taking subsidized flour.

However, the Professional Association of Modern Bakeries, which is affiliated with the Confederation of Citizen Enterprises of Tunisia (CONECT), announced on its unverified Facebook page on July 31 that all its bakeries stopped working starting from August 1 nationwide without giving any reasons behind its decision. The association includes 1,500 bakeries nationwide, Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP) reported, according to Anadolu.

Tunisia primarily imports wheat from Ukraine, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), and the halt of the Black Sea Grain Initiative would negatively impact this African country. While the shortage of wheat supply has affected the country, power outages are another reason behind the bread crisis. 

The head of the National Chamber of Bakery Owners, Mohamed Bouanane, said that the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (STEG) cut off electricity due to the heat wave and this forced bakery owners to get rid of wheat that became unusable for consumption, Diwan FM reported on July 26. He added that the bakery owners got rid of about two million loaves of bread daily due to power outages.

In addition to this, local wheat production in Tunisia declined by 60 percent this year, with only 250,000 tons of wheat produced due to drought, Reuters reported on July 21. Tunisia faced a severe drought this year due to a decline in rainfall and the rate of filling dams did not exceed 31 percent, AFP reported on April 1. Trade Minister Ben Rejeb also revealed in her interview with Al Chourouk that the country will import all wheat demands (24 million quintals) from abroad this year due to all these reasons.

The current crisis is not the first of its kind that Tunisia has witnessed. Last year, some bakeries closed due to the lack of basic commodities needed for bread. At the time, the president accused “some monopolists” of trying to create chaos in the country, Al Arabiya reported on May 22, 2022.

Historically, Tunisia witnessed riots over bread during the era of late President Habib Bourguiba when bread prices increased and the subsidy on bread was removed as an austerity measure set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The riots broke out in the town of Douz in southern Tunisia and then swept through the country in the period between December 1983 and January 1984. The incident resulted in the killing of dozens of protesters by security forces, Washington Post reported on January 4, 1984.