The food inflation presently plaguing the country has been attributed to the hoarding of grains.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Federal Competition and Consumers Protection Commission, FCCPC, made the submission at a town hall meeting with industry captains, MSMEs, market leaders, farmers, transporters and service providers in Kano.
The FCCPC boss, while addressing the crowd at the Afficent Centre, stated that the commission’s investigators discovered that some unscrupulous produce merchants were mopping up newly harvested grains and stashing them in warehouses to create artificial scarcity, thereby worsening the food inflation being experienced in the country.
According to him, without caring for the consequences of their action on fellow countrymen and women, some of the unscrupulous actors go as far as taking some of the food items they had mopped up from the farmers or the markets and smuggling them across the borders to sell at a premium, thereby endangering the national food security.
The event was sequel to the interactive sessions earlier hosted in Abuja and Lagos by FCCPC for stakeholders in the production and distribution chain in its renewed advocacy to curb anti-consumer practices across the country.
Bello sought the cooperation of the Kano stakeholders to curb the unwholesome practice in the national interest, saying that price fixing and the creation of artificial barriers in the form of entrance levies by market associations, among others are unethical.
He stressed, “Don’t get us wrong; we are by no means saying everyone is guilty here. We only have a few bad eggs involved in such unethical practices. It is therefore our collective responsibility to work together to achieve reasonable pricing of goods and services, especially at a time when the country is undergoing bold economic reforms which may bring temporary discomfort today but will definitely usher in a better economy for us tomorrow.”
He noted that though the FCCP Act prescribes stiff penalties ranging from heavy fines to jail terms for offenders, he told the Kano stakeholders that the Commission chose to first explore the option of dialogue in the spirit of democracy.
Bello noted that President Tinubu had already responded to some of the popular yearnings in the form of new policies, pledging he would similarly convey the views of the Kano stakeholders to the appropriate quarters while listing the gains of earlier engagements hosted by FCCPC in Abuja and Lagos.
The Federal Government, he said has also commenced the implementation of zero Value Added Tax, VAT, and excise duties on pharmaceutical products and medical devices, stressing that a number of taxes have also been removed to assist micro, small, and medium enterprises as well as taxes being removed from public transportation.
Bello advised the stakeholders to be patriotic by sharing the gains from the concessions being made by the government with the consumers, pointing out that when the government assists the operators of public transportation with easy credits to convert their vehicles from petrol to relatively far cheaper CNG, they don’t expect them to charge the same fares as those who buy petrol.
