Many traders in major markets across Lagos have complained about low patronage, noting that the soaring cost of food items is affecting the sales of commodities, including rice, eggs and many others.

For traders at the popular Ketu market, most prices of food items have escalated in the last few months, thereby diminishing purchasing power with them witnessing low sales return.

One of the traders in the market, Abdullahi Ahmadu, disclosed that a bag of wheat now sells at N17,000, a 21.43 percent jump from N14,000 previous months.

“The prices of items increase every day. If you come to the market tomorrow, you will not get the same price you will get today,” Ahmadu said.

“We don’t know what will happen as we are entering a festive season now. For most of us, we are even looking at how to get more money to buy items and sell during the season.”

Another trader in the market, Mrs. Bunmi Fash explained that the price of local rice (50 kilogrammes), which used to be N20,000 in the first half of the year — rising by 15 percent — increased to N23,000.

“Foreign-made rice (50kg), on the other hand, surged from N25,000 in the first half of the year to N30,000, signifying a 20 percent increase. Also, vegetable oil (25 litres) had a market price of N23,000 but increased to N25,000, up by 8.7 percent.

Mrs. Fash noted that a crate of medium-sized eggs jumped from N1200 to N2000, year-on-year, representing a 67 percent increase.

Further investigation at Daleko Market in Mushin shows that a big basket of tomatoes was N19,000, with a small basket traded for N4500. A 10kg size of semo went from N4800 to N5300, while a bag of corn that used to be between N8000 and N9000 doubled its price to about N19,000 and N22,000.

A bag of groundnuts increased from N48,000 in October to N52,000 in November.

A carton of croaker fish is now N30,000, and a medium-sized frozen chicken (full) rose from N1,700 in October and N1,500 in November 2020 to N2,000 in November.

Source:- Blueprint