The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) says it is crucial to address the anti-competitive behavior by market groups that has a negative impact on food costs amid increases in petrol pump prices.

At a “Fair Food Prices in Nigeria, Multi-Stakeholder Workshop” on Wednesday, Mr. Babatunde Irukera, Executive Vice-President of the FCCPC, reportedly revealed this.

 

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

He said that such associations’ focus should be on members’ standards and welfare, noting that 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. We will intervene when we find excesses due to exploitative conduct, taking advantage of consumers.

“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 cartels 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.

Webteam@ipledge2nigeria recalls that the pump price of fuel was increased from N539 to N617 per litre on Tuesday.

Earlier, the National Bureau of Statistics said June’s headline inflation stood at 22.79 per cent on Monday in its latest Consumer Price Index.