Tunisia's inflation rate rose to 5.5 per cent in the first four months of 2012 from 3.1 per cent in the same period last year, driven largely by a rise in the price of food and clothing, the National Statistics Institute said on Tuesday. Inflation in April reached 5.7 per cent, up from 5.4 per cent the previous month and 3 per cent in the same month of 2011, it said. Apart from food and clothing, price rises in April were driven by increases in the cost of tobacco and education, increasing strains on families at a time of rising unemployment. Tunisia's economy is still struggling to recover from last year's revolution, which ousted veteran leader Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali and sparked the Arab Spring protests. Those protests were largely sparked by economic malaise that has shown little sign of improving since the uprising. The economy shrank 2.2 per cent last year and the government has forecast 3.5 per cent growth in 2012.
