Increase In Food Prices: Traders To Face Sanctions, Says FG

By Adewunmi Adenekan

The Federal Government, through the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, has revealed that it will begin to roll out sanctions against members of trade associations guilty of anti-competitive practices, and irrational hikes in food prices.

Babatunde Irukera, the Chief Executive Officer of the FCCPC, made this known on Tuesday during a forum organized by the commission to discuss fair food prices.

The forum was titled ‘Fair food prices in Nigeria: A high-level forum for better competition’.

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.”

According to Irukera, some trade unions had constituted cartels to engage in anti-competitive practices that have led to price gouging of basic food items.

“Competition regulation and consumer protection is not only to regulate the big companies. It is not only to regulate the formal sector. 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", Irukera said.