TRIPOLI, March 19 (Xinhua) -- For the people of Tripoli, Ramadan has carried an unfamiliar weight this year. Economic hardship has dimmed the holy month's customary warmth, as inflation, cash shortages, and a weakening dinar push prices beyond the reach of ordinary families.
From crowded markets, where shoppers hesitate over prices before setting items back on the shelf, to protests erupting across the city as citizens grow frustrated with worsening conditions, the strain is visible everywhere.
Youssef Rajab, 46, a public employee and father of five, earns 2,000 Libyan dinars (around 200 U.S. dollars) a month, an amount that hardly covers necessary expenses. "We think twice before putting anything in the basket," he said.
His family has cut its shopping to essentials: dates, oil, tomatoes, flour, milk, and eggs. The traditional lavish Ramadan table, he acknowledged, is now a memory. A carton of 24 eggs, once around eight dinars, now sells for more than 24, a threefold increase in a single year.
At Souq Al-Mahari in the Al-Dhahra neighborhood, Nouria, a mother of three, said she has kept to a strict budget since the start of Ramadan, dividing her household income among rent, utilities, and food with little room for error. "Every dinar is carefully calculated," she said.
Eighteen kilometers east of the city center, Tajoura's vegetable market draws its usual Ramadan crowds, but the energy has shifted. Vendors hoist bags of potatoes and tomatoes as shoppers weigh purchases by the handful, silently tallying the cost. At the fruit stalls, where most goods are imported, demand has collapsed. Bananas, apples, and other fruits have roughly doubled in price as the dinar has slid against the dollar.
"Buying fruit has become a luxury," said Khaled, 37, pausing near a display he could no longer afford.
The Government of National Unity's Ministry of Economy and Trade said before Ramadan that it was working to stabilize food supplies through price monitoring and support for local distribution initiatives. The measures have done little to reassure shoppers.
Economic analyst Fawzi Daddash was blunt: the government's response has been inadequate. He said what is needed is a serious reckoning -- rationalizing public spending, reducing waste, overhauling salary and subsidy structures, redistributing income more equitably, and diversifying the economy beyond oil revenue.
Without such measures, he argued, no amount of market intervention will be enough.
