The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has hit its first target in Nigeria with bakers increasing the price of bread, effective Monday.
Apart from home made problems, the war has severely affected the price of wheat, which the bakers claimed constitutes about 60 per cent of the bread making process.
Bakers under the aegis of the Premium Bread makers Association of Nigeria (PBAN) have said they will increase the price of bread, effective Monday.
Apart from wheat, home made problems like the galloping increase in price of diesel and ‘ordinary’ water has added to their problems.
The President of the association, Emmanuel Onuorah, said the increase became inevitable due to soaring costs of operations.
He said, “For PBAN, we have increased our bread price. We increased the prices of our bread across all variants. Ordinarily, if we want to follow the trend, we should be increasing our bread price by N300. However, as a responsible association, we increased only the price of the bigger size-the one they call jumbo-by N100 and the sliced bread by N50.”
“We did not make any changes to the prices of the smaller sizes. The reason is that it is often bought by bricklayers, commercial motorcycle/tricycle operators, etc.”
According to Onuorah, a big part of the albatross hanging over the bread-making industry has to do with the import duty charged by the government on wheat imports.
“In other climes, especially here in Africa, the government removes duty on wheat imports because of the current global tension. But here, nobody is looking after anybody. We’ve been crying and talking about this, we’ve been doing advocacy, and yet nobody is coming to our aid,” he said.
He said, “Companies are shutting down their businesses as a result of the increase in the price of diesel. Some of my members shut down (their business premises) again this week. So many other companies are closing down.
“As we speak, operators in the sachet water business segment are on strike. They’ll likely increase the price of sachet water to N25 or N30. We don’t even know where this thing is tending towards. Bigger companies are closing because of operating costs. Businesses are going under.”
