Tough Christmas as food prices go up

This might not be the best of times for Nigerians, particularly those who plan to celebrate Christmas. With the festive season around the corner, the prices of food items in various markets across Lagos have been increasing astronomically in the last one month.

A check at the Mile 12 market in Lagos confirms that prices have been on the increase and most of the traders are blaming the cost of transportation for the rise in prices.

A bag of rice which used to sell between N8,000 and N9,000 now goes for N9,500 and N11,000. Equally, small and big baskets of tomatoes now go for N3,000 and N5,000, as against N2,000 and N3,000 previously, while a bag of pepper that used to sell for N3,500 now sells for between N4,500 to N5,000.

Muskilu Adebisi, a rice dealer, attributed the increase in the prices to the festive season and high demand by the buyers, as most people are purchasing to stock their homes.

“In addition to that, the quantity of the items supplied to the market is far below the demand of the people in need of them, thus bringing about the recent increase. This can be attributed to the increase in the cost of transportation as transporters are now charging higher to bring goods into the market,” Mr. Adebisi said.

The prices of other items such as spaghetti, macaroni, semovita as well as groceries have, however, remained stable.

Higher inflation level

A survey carried out by the National Bureau of Statistics for November showed that the Composite Consumers Price Index (CPI) for the month rose to 12.4 per cent. This was a 0.8 increase from the 11.6 per cent recorded in the month of October.

The survey points out that there was a higher increase in the inflation level in the rural areas than the urban areas as the Rural All Item Index increased by 0.8 per cent while the corresponding Urban index rose by 0.2 per cent.

This was higher when compared to the preceding months, as the corresponding 12 month average per cent change in the rural and urban indices rose by 14.3 and 9.3 respectively.

The inflation rise was, however, attributed to the unstable price of petroleum products which is affecting the cost of transportation and indirectly having an effect on the price of food stuff around the country. This affirms the claim of the market people who attributed the price increase to higher transportation costs.

The average monthly food price rose by 0.1 per cent in November as compared with what obtained in the month of October.

“The level of the Composite Food Index was higher than the corresponding level a year ago by 13.5 per cent. The average annual rate of rise of the index was 15.0 per cent for the 12 month period ending November 2009,” it stated.

The agency, however, said the rise in the index was caused by increase in the prices of food items like garri, yam, beans, onions tomatoes and vegetables. The rise in the prices of these items was considerably countered by the decline in the prices of some staples like maize, millet, sorghum, rice.

Other sectors apart from agriculture also witnessed an increase as the agency indicated that there was a 1.1 per cent increase in November 2009 due to slight increase in the prices of cooking gas, liquid fuels and some household goods and equipment.

“In the last 12 months, the index rose by 10.7 per cent while the average annual rate of the index was 9.1,” said the report.

The inflation rate, however, contradicts the claim of the Central Bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, who said in October that he expected inflation to fall below 10 per cent in December.