•Release grains from the silos, AFAN urges FG

The persistent rise in prices is not easing soon, experts have warned, as headline inflation inched up last month to 22.41 per cent.

Experts said the price crisis would continue for a while despite measures already taken by the new administration to boost confidence and increase supply.

This was the position of some economists who spoke in separate interviews with The Guardian in reaction to consume price index (CPI) data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) yesterday.

The report showed that the headline inflation, in May, rose to 22.41 per cent as against the 22.22 per cent it printed in April 2023, an increase of 0.19 percentage points.

Reacting to these figures, the CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr. Muda Yusuf, said nothing has changed significantly as far as the inflation outlook is concerned.

He said he expects it to rise higher in June when the full effect of the removal of the fuel subsidy would be felt.

He said the new exchange rate might not have a very significant effect because prices are already in the parallel market.

“If you check it, the unified rate is less than the parallel market rate. Many of the people who buy foreign exchange from the parallel market will move to the unified window which will bring down their prices,” he argued.

He advised government to tackle insecurity to help tame the escalating prices of food. This, he said, was because many of the farming communities have become desolate.

“The unification of the exchange rate is a step in the right direction because if more people can access forex from the unified window rather than the parallel market, that will bring down prices. The government should also address the issues of energy costs. It should bring down the cost of electricity by encouraging more players to go into the system.

“Government should licence more importers of fuel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and diesel. That will introduce competition that will bring down the cost of these products,” he said.

Lead Director Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), Eze Onyekpere, said nobody should expect inflation to come down shortly.

“Inflation is going to keep rising. One of the factors that drive inflation is an increase in the price of PMS because it will affect the cost of transportation which, in turn, will reflect in the prices of goods, including food,” Onyekpere said.

President of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), Kabir Ibrahim, said one of the immediate steps the government could take to bring down food inflation is to release food in its store.

“If we have grains in the silos, this is the time to release them, but I doubt if we have because we were affected by floods last year and farmlands were swept away.

“Our yield last year was very small and since we cannot import from outside because of the Ukraine-Russian war, our silos are almost empty”, he said.