By Adetunji Faleye
Yuletide is a period of festivities where consumers derive joy in purchasing items for the upkeep of the families. It is also a period sellers smile to the bank because of increase in the number of items they sell. However, this year’s Yuletide period may not be so, as there are clear indications that consumers’ purchasing power has been badly affected because of hyper-inflation, paucity of funds and weakness of naira against major foreign currencies like dollar, pounds and euro.
In Nigeria today, apart from monetary poverty: multidimensional poverty is even more widespread and set to rise due to the amorphous economic policy of the current administration.
Sadly, the number of poor people as forecasted earlier in the year by World Bank Blog that with the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis, the national poverty rate would jump from 40.1% in 2019 to 45.2% in 2022, implying that 100.9 million Nigerians will be living in poverty by 2022.
Selected food prices
Unfortunately, as the Yuletide period gets closer, prices of food items have continued to increase on daily basis. For instance, figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) of selected food price watch data for September 2021 (though prices have changed now and are unable to be tracked due to daily increase) reflected that the average price of 1 dozen of Agric eggs medium size increased year-on-year by 25.84% and month-on-month by 3.31% to N604.99 in September 2021 from N585.64 in August while the average price of piece of Agric eggs medium size (price of one) increased year-on-year by 27.33% and month-on-month by 2.67% to N54.62 in September 2021 from N53.20 in August 2021.
Also, the average price of 1kg of local rice, sold loose increased year-on-year and month-on-month by 4.95% and 0.01% respectively to N410.01 in September 2021 from N409.97 in August 2021.
The average price per litre paid by consumers for National Household Kerosene increased by 8.59% month-on-month and by 24.83% year-on-year to N434.39 in September 2021 from N400.01 in August 2021, while cooking gas has continued to increase unabated since September 2021 till now.
Apart from food items, Transport Fare Watch report for September 2021 showed that the average fare paid by commuters for bus journeys within the city increased by 1.11% month-on-month and by 40.56% year-on-year to N435.36 in September 2021 from N430.58 in August 2021. States with the highest bus journey fare within the city were Zamfara (N685.24), Bauchi (N630.17) and Taraba (N560.73) while States with the lowest bus journey fare within the city were Oyo (N215.43), Abia (N245.07) and Borno (N300.45).
Average fare paid by commuters for bus journey intercity increased by 1.24% month-on-month and by 20.09% year-on-year to N2,620.90 in September 2021 from N2,588.69 in August 2021. States with the highest bus journey fare intercity were Abuja FCT (N4,755.62), Lagos (N3,648.34) and Sokoto (N3,487.02) while states with the lowest bus journey fare within the city were Bayelsa (N1,876.04), Bauchi (N1,930.12) and Akwa Ibom (N1,983.10).
With the above data, increase in prices of food items and transport alone will affect many Nigerians in making their purchasing decisions during the festive period, as the level of poverty has continued to increase astronomically.
Analysts are of the opinion that while bad policies, effect of Covid-19, insecurity and other attendant crises have dealt a devastating blow on the economy this year, it is the consumers that will suffer more while brands also will share from the consequences of the badly managed economy.
Undoubtedly, the country’s persistently high inflation will erode consumers’ purchasing power which poses a downside risk to many brands, especially Fast-Moving Consumable Goods and sellers of food items in the traditional markets.
