Dear Subscriber,

Border closure takes its toll on price of rice

The price of a 50kg bag of rice has spiked 40% to N25,000 in the last month. The impact of the Seme border closure in late August appears to be now filtering through into consumer prices.

The border closure was imposed in part to halt the smuggling of foodstuff into Nigeria. However, it is not sustainable because local produce is simply inadequate to feed the country’s large and fast-growing population. This is reflected in September’s inflation numbers with imported food inflation increasing 15.57% y-o-y. This is well above the headline inflation rate of 11.24%.

In the slides, these and other issues were discussed on the Channels TV Business Morning programme today.

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