The price of meat increased. The price of bread did not fall. 5Alive and others prices are still not decreased in price. Should I say thanks to Dangote for crashing the price of AGO. We heard that the government refinery in Port Harcourt will be fully functional in April, but you can see fuel scarcity again instead and this is 28th of April. Fuel that we expected to be sold for 500 naira per liter is still 650 naira per liter.
Because of price control of local products, the federal government told Federal Competition & Consumer Protection (FCCPC) to try to regulate the price of goods in the country. They locked supermarket and doing as if something good as been done but nothing is coming down in price.
Two or three days ago, see what Indomie company’s Group Corporate Communications and Event Manager said in an interview:
Temitope Ashiwaju, the company’s Group Corporate Communications and Event Manager, made the clarification in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Saturday in Lagos.
Ms Ashiwaju said that the clarification became imperative to correct the wrong narrative about the reason for price adjustment for the product recently. He said that the company was also affected by the economic realities, hence the reason for increase in prices of indomie noodles in the past.
“For a listening company such as ours, we felt at some point in time, against our operational cost to adjust when things started to improve. “We had a price reduction, which is not one of those characters that is usually found with some other companies.
“Nigerians are quick to adjust prices when it is going up and favour them, but when prices go down, they are slow to do that. This is not our character at Indomie,” he said
The government were able to manipulate the price of naira up and the price of AGO also continue to increase which makes those local firms and companies to increase the price of goods and services, making the retail prices to be significantly high. Now the price of naira increased, AGO price decreased but most local products prices has not reduced and some still increased in price. Just Indomie and rice price that I know decreased in price among the consumable products. Almost all other products prices are still high.
I think the major reason the prices of local products are still high is because of transportation, by the time this traders go to the rural areas to buy this product and transport them at a very high transportation fee, they add that to the price of the goods they are selling. Imagine transporting trailer loads of fresh tomato from the North to south with over a thousand Naira for a litre of diesel.
As for the port Harcourt refinery it is not going to function anytime soon, I think whatever they are saying about the refinery coming into full operation is just to play to the gallery, the refinery needs total overhauling and the federal Government has not invested the required amount to make it come into full operation. however there is still foul play considering that the federal Government is still paying fuel subsidy and to corner some money to their pocket, because they are still paying the independent marketers who bring this product from overseas.
As for the federal government agency that has been deployed to checkmate the activities of traders, I feel for them to get significant result for this actions they've been taken so far, it's for their regional branches those in the state government and local government to go into the markets to implement and checkmate some of these excesses of traders. in doing that, people will start seeing result.