Fakoyejo OlalekanThe Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), an agency of the Federal Government, has warned trade associations against hiking food prices.
FCCPC made the warning after the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported that food inflation hit 25.25 per cent in June, up from 24.82 per cent in May.
Also, a state of emergency on food insecurity had also been declared by President Bola Tinubu to curb food inflation and ensure stability in food prices.
In a forum held on Tuesday, themed; ‘Fair food prices in Nigeria: A high-level forum for better competition,’ FCCPC chief executive, Babatunde Irukera, said the market will be monitored and prosecute associations that fix prices.
He said the informal market needs to regulate the informal market, as some cabals in the market are engaging in anti-competitive practices.
“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.
“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.
“Some trade unions had constituted cartels to engage in anti-competitive practices that have led to price gouging of basic food items.”
Defending the decision to monitor prices in the market, Irukera said: “Competition regulation and consumer protection is not only to regulate the big companies.
“It is not only to regulate the formal sector,” he said, adding, “It is also to regulate the informal sector. In a place like Nigeria, it is even more critical to find a strategy to regulate the informal sector because, at the end of the day, the vast majority of our economy is informal.”
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