Carthage — President Kais Saied stressed the need to "break with the usual methods that have led to limited results in the fight against monopoly and speculation," as he met with Minister of Trade and Export Development Samir Abid on Tuesday.

According to a statement from the Presidency of the Republic, Saied stressed "the need to break with the concept of campaigns, because the matter cannot be limited to one or two campaigns, but rather a policy that must continue without interruption and throughout the Republic," he said.

He also stressed the need to "definitively eliminate the channels that are called distribution channels, while they are criminal networks that affect farmers and citizens alike". The farmer sells his goods at the lowest price and the consumer buys them at the highest price, and the huge difference between the price at which the producer sells and the price paid by the consumer is enough to prove the enormity of this crime, which cannot continue and cannot go unpunished," he pointed out.

The President of the Republic recalled that the law allows the Ministry of Trade to adjust prices and to apply the legal consequences to any violation of a pricing decision.

He also instructed him to "purge the ministry and the Tunisian Trade Office of all those who do not carry out their duties properly".

He said that "the exorbitant price increases and the suffering of the citizens cannot continue and it is necessary to take a series of measures quickly, whether at the level of the relevant departments or against the lobbies that control prices or suddenly remove some items".

The President added that "all these phenomena indicate that the matter is premeditated and that someone is not playing his role in confronting and eliminating them".