According to well-known economist Bismarck Rewane, the prices of most food items have slightly decreased recently, but the cost of beans has gone up significantly.
Rewane shared this information on Channels Television’s Business Morning show Sunrise Daily breakfast program monitored by Tunexreportes. He mentioned that onions are now selling for N115,000, and rice prices have dropped to N110,000 from N120,000. Beans are the unexpected item that has caught everyone off guard. They are no longer easily available,” he stated. Our correspondent found that traders are selling a small container of beans for N13,000 and a cup of beans for N3,000. A bag of beans is now being sold for as much as N180,000.
The economist believes that the reason for the increase in the price of beans is due to recent floods that have affected states like Borno, Bauchi, and Sokoto, where food is produced. “Flooding ruined many products,” Rewane mentioned. He also said that it’s more expensive to transport crops from farms to markets now because petrol prices have risen from N600 to around N1,000 per liter. He believes that food prices will go up in the next few weeks, but he’s hopeful that duty waivers on imported goods will help keep prices down. Overall, he thinks inflation will still rise, despite the challenges we face.” Food prices will go up, causing headline inflation to rise to 34%. However, this increase is expected to be temporary.
Economist Rewane mentioned that once the duty waivers on imported goods take effect, prices will start to decrease. This is expected to happen on October 1, 2024. President Bola Tinubu mentioned that his main goal is to bring back peace to the areas in the North that are facing problems, so that farmers who had to leave because of bandits and kidnapping can go back to farming and grow more food. “We hope to see a big increase in food being produced and a drop in food prices. I assure you, we will not give up on this,” Tinubu said during his speech on Tuesday for Nigeria’s 64th Independence Day Anniversary. Nigeria is facing a severe economic crisis with increasing food prices due to the government’s decisions to remove petrol subsidy and unify foreign exchange rates in May 2023.
In August, upset young people protested about not having enough food and struggling financially for the first 10 days of the month. The country’s inflation rate was 32.15% in August, as reported by the National Bureau of State Statistics (NBS). The NBS mentioned that the food inflation rate in August 2024 was 37.52% compared to the same time last year, which was 8.18% higher than in August 2023. It said that the increase in food prices from last year was because of higher prices for bread, maize, grains, guinea corn, cereals, yam, Irish potatoes, water yam, cassava, palm oil, and vegetable oil, among other items. The Tinubu administration, along with governors from all states, has introduced some relief measures. However, Nigerians are still suffering greatly from the harsh effects of inflation as the prices of food and basic goods keep rising uncontrollably.
