Gilbert Ekugbe
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mohammad Sambo Nanono has blamed the devaluation of the Naira for the rise in food prices across the country.
According to him, most francophone countries now find it cheaper to buy naira with dollars to buy our foodstuffs for consumption.
He stated this during an interview with newsmen in Abuja, stating that the situation cannot be addressed since the implementation of African Continental Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement.
In his words, “Recently you can see certain rise in the prices of foods. The reason is because of the Naira crashed at the foreign exchange inter market. At the moment, dollar is selling for over N500 to one dollar. So for our French Colonies counterparts, they found it now cheaper to come and buy our Naira with dollar, our goods, including foodstuffs are being shipped out on a daily basis.
“This is the main reason currently responsible why the prices of foodstuffs in Nigeria have gone up and you cannot stop that under the AfCFTA agreement because there is free movement of goods and services. That is exactly the cause of the problem now.”
Nanono however added that price of rice in the market is gradually falling following the the emergence of dry season rice urging Nigerians to be ready to get local rice at cheaper prices in the market.
He said: “If you look carefully now, the price of rice has started coming down gradually. The reason for this is that dry season rice is coming on board and so if you take the cost of paddy rice per bag is about N14,000-N15,000 as against N20,000-N25,000 am talking about the price of rice as at today in Kano market in Kano State which is the barometer for measuring most of these agricultural commodities. So it is coming down.”
Speaking on hoarding of foods, the agric minister said: “And I understand as at last week, all these French countries have virtually wiped out the maize in the entire Baru market which is the largest grains market in the entire Africa. But by yesterday, the market is full of grains nobody is even buying it, so we anticipated that during the raining season the prices will gradually come down for rice.”
He continued: “And also, there are some elements of hoarding. Quite numbers of people with a lot of money, especially this portfolio merchants venturing in rice fraud by stockpiling them in their warehouses. Now, they realize that it is not giving them huge margins because some of them decided to buy these rice and stored. That is just a matter of time, you can only hoard to certain levels.
So the issue now is for we (government) and its people on how do we boost agricultural production to counter this. That is the challenge we are tackling now.”
He said the aside from naira devaluation, the COVID-19 pandemic and insecurity in the North East have also contributed to the rise in food prices.
