Onuorah emphasized the importance of wheat importers and other stakeholders in the breadmaking value chain refraining from increasing the cost of bread.
By Johnson Atoukudu:
Emmanuel Onuorah, the President of the Premium Breadmiller Association of Nigeria, highlighted during an interview on Arise Television that a stakeholder involved in the breadmaking process has expressed concern about raising prices.
Onuorah emphasized the importance of wheat importers and other stakeholders in the breadmaking value chain refraining from increasing the cost of bread.
He pointed out that prior to the unification of the foreign exchange window by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration, wheat importers used to claim purchasing foreign currency at parallel market rates. Onuorah expressed his disappointment, stating that any further price hikes would result in reduced profits for breadmakers.
He said, “The wheat-flour value chain will always tell you that foreign exchange prices of bread are increasing because we source their forex from the parallel market; that is, their catchphrase then.
“Now that President Tinubu’s government has liberalized the forex window, they are saying they were getting it at the then-official price. What does this tell you?
“They want the bread business to be unprofitable for breadmakers. Recently we started hearing that they want to increase bread to as much as N5,000 or maybe around N2500, but because of the tension, they have to put it on hold. We are calling on them not to do that; they have been buying forex at a parallel market rate, so what has changed?”
“Everybody must make sacrifices now; the same goes for sugar refiners”, he stated.
