Traders and other market stakeholders engaged in manipulative pricing have been given a one-month notice by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) to reduce the prices of goods
According to a statement released by the commission on Thursday, Tunji Bello, the Executive Vice-Chairman of the FCCPC, issued the directive during a one-day stakeholders’ meeting on exploitative pricing in Abuja.
Bello claimed that after the notice expires, the commission would start enforcement.
The purpose of the meeting, according to him, was to discuss the rising trend of excessive prices for consumer goods and services as well as the unhealthy activities of market associations.
Bello said: “The issue of critical national importance of the day is the growing trend of unreasonable pricing of consumer goods and services across the country, and the unwholesome practice of market associations engaged in price fixing.
‘’As a responsive organization, we have carried out discreet market surveys extensively across the country in the past few weeks. Our findings are quite disturbing, to put it mildly. Therefore, our gathering here today (yesterday) is to underscore the gravity of the situation and the urgency of the need to work together to check this unwholesome development.
“As a statutory body whose mandate is to cater to consumer rights, we cannot allow this unhealthy trend to continue. To be sure, we quite recognize that an unfavourable exchange rate has negatively impacted the cost of production in local currency. However, the margin in pricing goods and services is unreasonable or excessive in a few cases.
‘’We have observed, for instance, that the margin in the prices of imported goods are very disproportionate in many cases; and in the case of locally produced goods, excessively inflated. This is an untenable situation, particularly in the retail segment, where we have identified patterns of price fixing perpetrated by some market associations, price gouging, and other anti-consumer practices.
