Nigerian households have never had it so bad; since the outset of coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19, on Feb. 27, 2020, many of them have been agonising over how to make ends meet.
The coronavirus, which soon assumed pandemic level, left in its wake job losses, salary cuts and a growing army of unemployed youths, negatively impacting incomes of many households.
The coronavirus pandemic apart, Nigerian households have also been reeling under the effect of double-digit inflation, which has whittled their purchasing power.
Indeed, a report of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said the inflation rate for the month of June, rose from 16.82 per cent in April 2022 to 17. 71 per cent, its highest level in 11 months, driven by surging prices of foodstuffs.
Consequently, households are now devising different survival strategies for survival; many of them no longer buy goods in bulk, preferring cheaper alternatives and buying in piecemeal.
Manufacturers of essential commodities, who are currently experiencing dwindling sales, have responded by devising means of reaching the average households whose incomes have been negatively impacted by the combined effects of the coronavirus pandemic and inflation.
Many manufacturers soon switched from jumbo packs to smaller packs and sachets to give the average income households access to essential commodities.
It is now common to see products such as milk, toothpaste, tomato paste, disinfectants, gins, among others, in smaller packs and sachets in supermarkets, corner shops and other retail outlets.
Mrs Ayishat Reuben, a full-time housewife at Canal View Estate, Okeafa, Isolo, Lagos State, said manufacturing companies had made life easier by coming up with such products that average Nigerians could afford.
“The beauty of these smaller products is that they have the same content as the ones in bigger containers, and they are affordable and life savers.
“My three children in primary school do not lack breakfast because with N300, I buy a sachet of Milo and bread for them,” she said.
Mr Malcolm Ojong, a former staff of National Museum, Lagos, believes that many Nigerian families are now buying sachet products as they are cheaper and more affordable.
“Everything I use in my house, I buy in sachets and at low prices; companies have made life easier for me and my family,” he said.
Mrs Adanne Udi, a former staff of Tiddler International School, Egbe, Lagos State, said she was happy that manufacturers started producing essential commodities in smaller packs.
“It is as if manufacturing companies knew my suffering and decided to begin the production of smaller products; I cook ‘moi-moi’ and make pap, which I sell with sachet liquid milk.
“Since I started this trade, I have made more money to feed my family than when I was in school.
“I sell the tin milk as well, but people don’t buy it as much as they buy the packet milk because is more affordable,” she said.
Mr George Mbam, Chief Executive Officer of Green Baskit, said the introduction of products in smaller packs and sachets was to give more people access to value they could afford.
He said his company would offer more products that would be affordable to low income families whose purchasing power had been eroded.
“At Green Baskit, we make healthy African Snacks, and doing this ethically out of the natural ingredients, we use means that our price points would ordinarily be above the buying power or the low-income earners.
“For example, a pack of our Donkwa Balls Snacks goes for N850, and a pack of our dried fruits and nuts mix (Nutty Fruity Mix) goes for N1,650 and some people consider these prices to be too high for them.
“The only way we can make our products accessible and affordable to these categories of people is to make value packs that come in smaller and much more affordable sachets,” said Mbam.
He said his company was working on smaller packs: “This way, we are able to offer healthy snacks at a lower price point, while still keeping the quality high enough that we can be confident in our product.
“The brand mission of Green Baskit is to make healthy African snacks accessible, affordable and acceptable to everyone.
“I believe ‘sachetisation’ is one of the ways through which we can achieve this mission and we are doing a lot of work towards this,” Mbam said.
Mr Francis Ofonime, Executive Manager of Homemade Soya Choco, said the current rate of inflation, particularly on food items, had made many families not eat healthy and well.
“Seeing the situation, I decided that in my company I would not produce items that I would not be able to sell; I would rather produce what the poor can also benefit.
“If I take you to our store, you would not find any jumbo pack of 450g Homemade Soya Choco, which I used to produce and sell at N4,000 in time past.
“This is because it takes a longer time to sell; I have since started producing a value pack of 150g, which sells for N1,000.
“This repackaging of goods into smaller quantities has made life easier for many households because it is portable and affordable for people who do not have the resources to buy the jumbo packs,” he said.
Ofonime, however, urged the federal government to free millions of poor Nigerians from poverty and build a new economic system that would work for everyone, not just a fortunate few.
Meanwhile, Prof. Hassan Oaikhenan of the Department of Economics, University of Benin, Benin-City, said economic policies that were aimed at dealing with inflation would only work when the enabling environment for the production of goods and services was put in place.
According to him, it is the responsibility of the government to put the much-needed enabling environment in place.
“For me, therefore, addressing the bottlenecks that stand in the way of a productive real sector of the economy is the logical first step that needs to be taken to curtail inflation in the economy.
“There is also need to address the pervasive problem of insecurity, which has served to stifle agricultural production by peasant farmers, given that such activities play a significant role in moderating the prices of foodstuffs.
“Infrastructural bottlenecks such as dilapidated roads serve to raise the cost of transportation of food items, a major driver of the inflationary situation. There is an overriding need to address this.
“Given the exchange rate depreciation and rising inflation, deriving from the hugely import-dependent nature of the economy, it becomes imperative for policy makers to implement policies geared towards reversing the dwindling exchange rate of the naira.
“This calls for pragmatic efforts to beef up domestic production for consumption and export; there are no quick fix solutions to the undesirable trend in the prices of goods and services.
“Accordingly, the government should address the problem of inflation in the economy, a problem that has the undesirable potential to assume a monstrous dimension that could end up making the Nigerian Naira to go the way of the Zimbabwean dollar,” Oaikhenan said.
Expectations are rife that the federal government will ultimately engineer a new business clime that will reverse the undesirable trend of rising inflation that has withered the income of many households.
Until that happens, the average Nigerian consumers, and manufacturers of household products have found a meeting point in sachet products. Call it a marriage of convenience, and you might just be right.
CREDITED: Lydia Ngwakwe, News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
