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Amid hikes in fuel pump prices, the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) says it is critical to address the anti-competitive conduct by market associations that negatively impacts food prices.
According to NAN, FCCPC Executive Vice-President, Mr Babatunde Irukera, disclosed this at a “Fair Food Prices in Nigeria, Multi-Stakeholder Workshop” on Wednesday.
According to him, trade associations, in many aspects, have constituted themselves into cartels which are illegal.
He said that such associations’ focus should be on members’ standards and welfare, noting that they were not to determine prices.
“We have no control over monetary policies, but the role we play is that we will continue to monitor the markets. We will intervene when we find excesses due to exploitative conduct, taking advantage of consumers.
“One of the ways of intervening is unlocking whatever the bottlenecks are. Associations that come together to determine what price commodities should be sold, or those that form cartels to stop Nigerians from being part of any business, will not be allowed.
“We will proceed against them as we proceed against those multinationals in their trade associations; we will proceed against even the small guys in the market, but what is important is these things, no matter how small they are, whatever those supplies are must still be available,” he said.