Price Of Bread May Hit N1,000 In Two Weeks, Says President, Bakers Association

The President, Premium Bakers Association of Nigeria, Emmanuel Onuorah, has said that the price of bread will be increased further in the next two weeks.

Onuorah made the disclosure on Tuesday on TVC Business Nigeria, blaming the development on the country’s poor business environment.

Depending on the size, the price of bread hovers between N500 and N800 per loaf.

He said, “We have not even increased the cost of our bread commensurate with the increase in the cost of materials, because for you to be able to run the business, cost and revenue must match each other.

“In our own instance, the cost has overshot revenue. If you buy a six hundred trailer of flour to use in your company, most of us, by the time we finish baking, our revenue will be enough to pay for only four hundred. You will have a shortfall of two hundred.

“Now we just did a marginal increase after negotiating with our stakeholders, the distributors. We haven’t even finished the negotiation and the millers have increased the price again by N1,500.

“And for every N1,000 increase in the price of flour, it is N10 shelve off from our margin. We are running at a serious loss. We just did one yesterday, I don’t even know what next week is going to tell.

“I’m very certain before two weeks’ time, we are going to do another price increase again. Ordinarily, we are supposed to increase bread by N250- that is the jumbo size, then the small size (slice bread) we are supposed to increase by about N150, so that we will be able to break-even.”

Bread makers are lamenting that the ingredients for production of bread have seen an alarming surge over the last three months.

According to him, milk price has risen from N72,000 to N80,000 between February 10, 2022 to April 25, 2022, while flour rose from N19,000 per bag to N24,500 during the same period.

Sugar has also risen from N20,500 to N25,000, while flavour is currently at N8,000, up from the N6,500 sold on February 10 this year.

He lamented that diesel prices rose from N350 to around N700 per litre thereby increasing production cost.

Onuarah said, “Salt increased by N1,000, yeast increased by N3,000 and as I was stepping in here today again, yeast has increased by another N600. I just got the alert now. the company just informed me.

“Preservatives increased by N7,000, margarine increased by N6,500, soya beans increased by a whopping N4,400. Egg that we used to buy for N800 is now N2,200. What business can survive this kind of continuous increase in prices?

“Before now you never looked at diesel cost as something so paramount, but diesel cost today has doubled.”

He said the break baking business is volume driven adding, “we have just done a N100 (price increase). We are running on a N188 (shortfall), so we have a negative N88.”

The association president also lamented import duty on wheat, saying “the government must do something to ameliorate the impact of this import duty on the millers.”

Onuorah said they are charged 30 per cent on wheat imports.

He added, “Some other climes in Africa, because of the Covid and the tension in Europe occasioned by the Russia-Ukraine crisis, they froze import duty on wheat.

“But here, they still charge 30 per cent. I’m calling on the federal government to look at that 30 per cent now. As an interim measure, have a moratorium, maybe in the next one year. It is only the living that you can govern.”