The Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) on Wednesday harped on the need to tackle cartels and address the anti-competitive conduct by market associations that are having negative impacts on food prices.

BRANDPOWER reports that the Executive Vice-President, FCCPC, Mr Babatunde Irukera, said this at a stakeholders workshop tagged: Fair Food Prices in Nigeria. The workshop was organised by the FCCPC in partnership with Consumer International, in Lagos.

Iruka stated that the focus of such associations should be on standards and welfare of members and not to determine prices.

He expressed worry that trade associations, in many aspects, have constituted themselves into cartel, which was illegal.

“We have no control over monetary policies, but have a role to continue to monitor the markets.

“Where we find excesses on an account of exploitative conduct, taking advantage of consumers, we will intervene by unlocking whatever the bottlenecks are.

“Associations that come together to determine what price commodities should be sold, or those that form cartel to stop Nigerians from being part of any business will not be allowed.

“We will proceed against them as we proceed against those multinationals in their trade associations,” he said.

According to him, government had continued to open its special reserves to ensure avalability of fertilisers and grains for consumption.

The FCCPC boss noted that the middlemen had been identified to be one of the challenges contributing to incessant food price increase.

Irukera urged the Federal Government to come up with strategies to control those illegal cartels, noting that the commission would not relent in enforcement to put them to check.

He stated that the government must address the middlemen, commodity traders who have bought and are hoarding goods and working on an association platform.

According to him, the FCCPC would contribute an aggressive enforcement focus on these associations.

“For us, the most important thing about proceedings is at least prohibiting their conducts and unlocking the market.

“The question of whether there is monetary sanctions or penality for conduct is secondary.

”What it is at the end of the day is that the regulatory intervention must be beyond being able to show that monetary penalty and the regulators have made so much income.

“The key thing is correction because in managing sanction regime, you also want to ensure that that sanctions do not end up in the bucket book of consumers and so it is going to be a mix of sanctions but much more it has to be corrective.

“Whether in input supplies, in fertiliser or market traders association, it is associations that constitute cartels that are increasing food prices,” Iruka said food prices: FCCPC to address anti-competitive conduct by market associations