Nigerians pay more for food in May as hunger bites

When compared to the previous month, Nigerians were forced to pay extra for 40 of 42 food items examined by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).

The NBS revealed this in a report titled “Selected Food Price Watch for May 2021,” which was released on its website and analyzed by Ripples Nigeria on Monday.

According to the report, only the cost of local loose rice and medium grained rice dropped, while the cost of all other food items grew from the previous month.

The average price paid for local rice dropped from N399.07 to N397.80. Ekiti state residents paid (N574.13) the highest amount and Jigawa (293.87) was the cheapest.

Similarly, the cost of rice medium grained fell to N441.49 from n441.85 in April. Adamawa (273.07) was the cheapest while Bayelsa (619.05) was the highest.

On the flip side the price of two variant of beans rose the highest at 15.94 and 13.23 percent respectively from the previous month.

Cost of Beans brown,sold loose rose from N378.82 to N439.22 the highest amount paid was in Anambra (N670.3) and lowest was Bauchi (N196.2)

Beans:white black eye sold loose on the hand sold at N407.23 from N359.64 in April. Anambra (N699.55) again was the most expensive and the lowest was Bauchi (N198.26)

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Annual food inflation, on the other hand, was driven by the cost of beans and garri.

According to the study, national beans had annual of 58.28 percent, while national garri experienced annual inflation rates of 53.89 percent.

Other part of the report reads, “Selected food price watch data for May 2021 reflected that the average price of one dozen of agric eggs medium size increased year-on-year by 17.10 per cent and month-on month by 2.10 per cent to N541.53 in May 2021 from N530.40 in April 2021; while the average price of piece of agric eggs medium size (price of one) increased year-on-year by 22.41 per cent and month-on-month by 1.72 per cent to N49.99 in May 2021 from N49.14 in April 2021.

“The average price of 1kg of tomato increased year-on-year by 9.09 per cent and month-on-month by 9.47 per cent to N303.51 in May 2021 from N277.26 in April 2021.”

The average price of 1kg of rice (imported high quality sold loose) increased year-on-year by 17.46 per cent and month-on-month by 0.65 per cent to N544.09 in May 2021 from N540.58 in April 2021.

It added that the average price of 1kg of yam tuber increased year-on-year by 13.96 per cent and month on month by 6.80 per cent to N269.98 in May 2021 from N252.80 in April 2021.

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