This is a summer Tunisians won’t soon forget. Since mid-July, finding a simple bottle of mineral water has become, across much of the country, a genuine daily struggle. Far from fading, the crisis has settled in for the long haul, despite repeated promises of a swift return to normal.
The paradox is striking. The country has thirty-one bottling plants capable of producing, in theory, up to 520,000 bottles per hour. And yet, as recently as Saturday, August 29, a line stretched from a roundabout deep into the aisles of a Carrefour in La Marsa, not for a new smartphone or a back-to-school deal, but for two modest packs of water. « We’ve never seen anything like this in Tunisia, » said one 65-year-old resident who arrived among the first in line that morning.
Several factors have combined to produce this bottleneck. The heatwave came first, with temperatures climbing as high as 40 degrees Celsius in the shade, pushing consumption well beyond normal levels. Power cuts from the national electricity and gas utility made matters worse, repeatedly halting bottling lines and forcing manufacturers to shut down and restart their machines, risking damage to the equipment. On top of that, a new regulation on checks appears to have squeezed the cash flow of some wholesalers, disrupting their supply chains.
Faced with empty shelves, the temptation to speculate was quick to surface. Some shopkeepers deliberately limited their sales, only to quietly resell chilled bottles later at an illegal markup, sometimes dubbed a « refrigeration fee. » Others diverted their stock entirely to cafés and restaurants, which then charged customers well above the legal price. The Tunisian consumer protection organization eventually had to urge the public to stop panic-buying, which was only deepening the shortage.
Given the scale of the problem, the Ministry of Commerce finally stepped in on August 19 with a strict price cap: a 1.5-liter bottle can no longer cost more than 850 millimes, with gross margins capped at 15 percent for both wholesalers and retailers. On the ground, though, that ceiling is still widely ignored. Inspections have nonetheless intensified, with more than 147,000 liters of bottled water seized since the second half of July over pricing violations and a lack of transparency in transactions. In Nabeul, one wholesaler was caught red-handed hoarding part of his reserves while refusing to supply certain retailers.
Authorities are meanwhile trying to pump additional volumes back into the distribution network. In Nabeul governorate, a popular summer destination, tens of thousands of extra bottles have been released onto the market within a matter of weeks, with a daily target of sixteen thousand bottles distributed across the region’s various districts, including Hammamet.
Even so, the promised end date for the crisis keeps slipping further away. First described in mid-August as a matter of days, then pushed back another ten days according to industry professionals, the relief that was pledged still hadn’t materialized by the close of August. This strain over something as basic as bottled water is unfolding, moreover, against a broader backdrop of social unrest, with gatherings in Tunis protesting recurring water and power cuts, the rising cost of living, and restrictions on public freedoms. A summer that, in the end, is leaving marks that go well beyond the heat.