Members of trade associations guilty of anti-competitive practices, aimless and irrational hike of food costs will hereafter be sanctioned by the Federal Government, through the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
This was uncovered by FCCPC President, Babatunde Irukera, at a gathering coordinated by the commission to examine fair food costs on Tuesday, July 18. This is coming after President Bola Tinubu pronounced food security as a public crisis last week.
Irukera stated that the authorizations became important as some worker's organizations have comprised cartels to participate in enemy of serious practices that have prompted value gouging of fundamental food things.
He said;
“We will continue to monitor the market, and where we find that prices are excessive or find exploitative conduct, or find that consumers are being taken advantage of, we will intervene. One of the ways of intervening is unlocking the bottlenecks.“That is what I just said, associations that come together to determine at what price beans should be sold, associations that come together to decide that nobody in a particular market should take yam, beans or rice from any other person except their members, we will proceed against them.“Competition regulation and consumer protection is not only to regulate the big companies. It is not only to regulate the formal sector. It is also to regulate the informal sector. In a place like Nigeria, it is even more critical to find a strategy to regulate the informal sector because, at the end of the day the vast majority of our economy is informal."
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