The association of bakers in Nigeria have announced its plan to increase the price of bread from Monday, April 25, 2022
The association said the hike in the cost of bread became necessary and inevitable due to the high cost of production and the import duty on wheat imports.
The President of the Premium Breadmakers Association of Nigeria (PBAN), Emmanuel Onuorah, made this known in an interview with The Punch on Sunday.
He asserted that the latest increase may lead to further increments if the challenges facing the bakers are not immediately tackled.
Onuorah disclosed that the bakers increased only the price of the bigger size by N100 and the sliced bread by N50, adding that it did not hike the prices of the smaller sizes.
“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.”
Onuorah further slammed the federal government for the high import duty charged on wheat imports and allowing the flour-producing companies to increase the price of the product.
He said: “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.
“We don’t import only wheat. Let me give you a list of the inputs we use in making bread, and you will see that almost all of them are imported. Number one, we use wheat to produce the flour-this makes about 60 per cent of the inputs we use. Two, sugar-we refined sugar in Nigeria but the syrup we use to refine it comes from Brazil-
we import it. Three-the softener we use in making the bread to be soft is imported from Europe and from China. The preservative we use also comes from China and Europe.
“On Thursday, the millers increased flour price by N1,500 per bag. We had not even increased the price of bread at that time. For the N1,500 increase in the price of flour, we’ve lost N30 on our margin, and our price increase has not even begun. The increase in the price of bread will begin tomorrow.”
