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The Federal Competitors and Shopper Safety Fee has blamed hoarders for the escalating meals costs within the nation.
Based on the FCCPC Chief Government Officer, Tunji Bello, some unscrupulous produce retailers are stockpiling newly harvested grains, inflicting synthetic shortage and driving up meals inflation.
In an announcement on Wednesday, Bello addressed key stakeholders, together with market leaders, farmers, transporters, and repair suppliers, at a city corridor assembly in Kano, saying FCCPC investigators uncovered a sample the place sure retailers have been hoarding grains to govern costs, additional worsening the nation’s inflation disaster.
Based on the Nationwide Bureau of Statistics, the September 2024 meals inflation was at 37.77 per cent, sustaining a development of regular enhance since December 2022 (23.75 per cent).
Bello said, “With out caring for the implications of their motion on fellow countrymen and ladies, a few of these unscrupulous actors go so far as taking a number of the meals gadgets they’d mopped up from the farmers or the markets and smuggling them throughout the borders to promote at a premium, thereby endangering our nationwide meals safety.”
The city corridor assembly adopted comparable classes held in Abuja and Lagos, as a part of the FCCPC’s efforts to fight anti-consumer practices nationwide.
Bello known as on Kano’s stakeholders to collaborate in tackling what he known as unethical practices, stating that the hoarding of meals gadgets not solely threatens meals safety but additionally undermines the federal government’s financial reforms.
“Don’t get us mistaken; we’re in no way saying everyone seems to be responsible right here. We solely have just a few dangerous eggs concerned in such unethical practices. It’s subsequently our collective accountability to work collectively to realize cheap pricing of products and companies,” Bello added.
The FCCPC boss recognized value fixing and the imposition of levies by market associations as unethical practices, which had additionally contributed to inflated costs.
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He famous that though the FCCP Act prescribed stiff penalties for offenders, the fee was choosing dialogue as the primary plan of action.
He additionally highlighted the optimistic outcomes from the fee’s earlier engagements in Abuja and Lagos, stating that President Bola Tinubu had already responded to public considerations via the introduction of latest insurance policies.
Bello assured the Kano stakeholders that their views would even be conveyed to the presidency.
“We now have a really listening President within the individual of His Excellency, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He feels for the folks and shares their pains and is ever keen to go the additional mile to take measures to cushion the consequences of the hardship the continuing financial reforms might deliver,” he remarked.
The FCCPC boss advised the retailers in attendance that the Federal Authorities had begun implementing a zero VAT coverage on pharmaceutical merchandise and medical gadgets, whereas a number of taxes had been eliminated to ease the burden on micro, small, and medium enterprises, in addition to public transportation.
He urged transport operators to mirror authorities concessions of their pricing, significantly after they obtain help to transform autos from petrol to cheaper compressed pure fuel.
“We don’t anticipate them to cost the identical fares as those that purchase petrol,” he averred.
Nevertheless, stakeholders, together with the Pharmaceutical Producers Group Producers Affiliation of Nigeria and the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, have decried the sluggish and seemingly nonexistent implementation of the zero VAT coverage on pharmaceutical merchandise and medical gadgets.
The PMG-MAN Chairman, Oluwatosin Jolayemi, on September 4, appealed to the Federal Authorities to finalise the implementation framework of the Government Order President Tinubu made on June 28, 2024.
Following Jolayemi’s attraction, the Federal Ministry of Well being and Social Welfare on October 9 introduced that it was set to implement zero VAT and excise duties on pharmaceutical merchandise and medical gadgets having finalised the Government Order Harmonised Implementation Framework clearing it for gazetting.
