In Tunisia, the cost-of-living crisis has outlasted the government it once toppled. On December 17, 2010, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Sidi Bouzid following years of police harassment, setting off protests driven by unemployment, corruption, rising living costs and police brutality. The movement, which became known as the Arab Spring, ultimately toppled longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and four other leaders around the Arab world.
Nearly 16 years later, however, Tunisians are still facing a cost-of-living crisis that some say is worse than ever. To show how much everyday prices have changed, Al Jazeera tracked the cost of common food items and compared them with their 2010 prices. In December 2010, one United States dollar bought 1.47 Tunisian dinars.
Today it buys 2.93, meaning each dinar is only worth half (49 percent) the dollar value it was worth 15 years ago. Tunisia buys much of its food abroad and pays for it in dollars and euros. A weaker dinar means each of those purchases costs more, and shoppers see it at the till.
Prices at the supermarket tell the story. In 2010, eight Tunisian dinars bought 4kg (8.8lb) of tomatoes, half a kg (1.1lb) of chicken and a litre (34oz) of cooking oil. Today the same eight dinars buys less than half of that.
The price of tomatoes has risen 113 percent; chicken, 118 percent; and cooking oil, 129 percent. Prices of vegetables have climbed higher still. Carrots now cost 428 percent more (that is more than five times) than they did in 2010, potatoes 268 percent.
Beef, already the most expensive item on the list, has risen 290 percent (nearly four times) to 52.5 dinars a kg – or about $18. Rice, still tightly price-controlled, is the outlier at 10 percent higher. Abdessattar*, 55, from El Jem, says that with the exception of subsidised goods, the increases are hard to miss.
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