The commission’s chairman stated that the commission will confront market associations that operated as cartels showcasing anti-competitive conduct which has led to the exorbitant increment in the price of basic food items.
The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) has said it will start monitoring the activities of market associations that are guilty of enabling unnecessary hikes in food prices.
This was disclosed by the Executive Vice-Chairman of the FCCPC, Mr. Babatunde Irukera during a stakeholders’ meeting tagged “Fair Food Prices in Nigeria, Multi-stakeholder Workshop” organized by the commission.
Speaking further, Irukera said the commission was ready to confront market associations that operated as cartels and also showcased anti-competitive conduct which led to the exorbitant increment in the price of basic food items.
He said, “We will continue to monitor the market, and where we find that prices are excessive or find exploitative conduct, or find that consumers are being taken advantage of, we will intervene. One of the ways of intervening is unlocking the bottlenecks.
“That is what I just said, associations that come together to determine at what price beans should be sold, associations that come together to decide that nobody in a particular market should take yam, beans, or rice from any other person except their members, we will proceed against them.”
Recall President Bola Tinubu recently declared a state of emergency to tackle increased food prices and shortages. The FG said the move aimed to improve food security and supply, as increasing prices have caused widespread hardship across the country.
According to a UN report published in January 2023, the number of Nigerians that may not afford nutritious food every day has been pegged at 25 million.
While most of the price increments have been traced to the activities of these market associations, some economic factors have also been noticed to influence the price of food items. Early this year, there was a surge in food prices during the naira redesign policy which caused scarcity of cash across the country.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed the inflation rate rose to 21.91% in February 2023.
The recent increase in fuel prices has also caused a hike in food prices as businessmen, food producers, and retailers are currently facing hard times as they have to spend more money to transport their products.
With the increase in transportation costs, most of the traders who deal mainly in food products have been forced to transfer a huge part of the costs to the customers.
