July 19, 2023

The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) says it is critical to address the anti-competitive conduct by market associations that are having negative impacts on food prices.

FCCPC Executive Vice-President, Mr. Babatunde Irukera, said this at a workshop tagged: “Fair Food Prices in Nigeria, Multi-stakeholder Workshop”.

The workshop was organised by the FCCPC in partnership with Consumer International in Lagos.

According to him, trade associations, in many aspects, have constituted themselves into cartel and which are illegal.

He said that the focus of such associations should be on standards and welfare of members, noting that certainly they were not to determine prices.

“We have no control over monetary policies but the role we play is that we will continue to monitor the markets. Where we find excesses on an account of exploitative conduct, taking advantage of consumers, we will intervene.

“One of the ways of intervening is unlocking whatever the bottlenecks are. Associations that come together to determine what price commodities should be sold, or those that form cartel to stop Nigerians from being part of any business will not be allowed.

“We will proceed against them as we proceed against those multinationals in their trade associations, we will proceed against even the small guys in the market, but what is important is these things, no matter how small they are, whatever those supplies are must still be available,” he said.

Irukera said that the government had continued to open its special reserves to ensure availability of fertilisers and grains for consumptions.

The FCCPC boss noted that the middlemen had been identified to be one of the challenges contributing to incessant food price increase.

He also urged the Federal Government to come up with strategies to control those cartels, saying the commission would not relent in enforcement to put them to check.

“We are not addressing those middlemen. Commodity traders who have bought and are hoarding, and working on association platform must also be addressed.

“What the FCCPC would contribute is an aggressive enforcement focus on these associations. For us the most important thing about proceedings is at least prohibiting their conducts and unlocking the market.

“The question of whether there is monetary sanctions or penalty for conduct is secondary. What it is at the end of the day is that the regulatory intervention must be beyond being able to show that monetary penalty and the regulators have made so much income.

“It must be correcting. For us, the key thing is correction because in managing sanction regime, you also want to ensure that that sanctions do not end up in the bucket book of consumers and so it is going to be a mix of sanctions but much more it has to be corrective.

“It is associations, whether in input supplies, in fertiliser or market traders’ association that constitute cartels that are increasing food prices,” he said.(NAN)