Price of food items hike in April-NBS

The average price of some selected food items in the country increased in April, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed.

NBS said this in its “Selected Food Price Watch (April 2020)’’ report released by the statistician general of the Federation, Yemi Kale, on his official Twitter handle during the week.

The bureau said the average price of one dozen of ‘agric’ medium-sized eggs increased year-on-year by 2.04 per cent and month-on-month by 3.38 per cent to N476.72, from N461.15 in March.

However, it said the average price of a medium-sized agric egg (price of one) decreased year-on-year by -0.98 per cent and increased month-on-month by 4.11 per cent to N41.54 in April from N39.90 in March.

According to the report, the average price of one kilogram of rice (imported high quality) increased year-on-year by 31.97 per cent and month-on-month by 7.56 per cent to N471.84 in April from N438.66 in March .

The bureau said the average price of 1kg of tomato also increased year-on-year by 7.68 per cent, as well as month-on-month by 8.49 per cent to N277.00 in the same month as against N255.33 in March.

In a similar manner, the average price of 1kg of yam tubers increased year-on-year by 3.48 per cent and month-on-month by 11.63 per cent to N230.09 in April from N206.12 in March, the report noted.

The NBS said the prices were collected in all the 774 local governments across all states and the FCT from over 10,000 respondents and, “locations which reflect actual prices households in states actually bought those items”.

It said field work was done solely by over 700 NBS staff in all states of the federation “with support from supervisors who are monitored by internal and external observers”.

The report said the average of all the prices is then reported for each state and the average for the country is the average for the states. It said the NBS audit team subsequently conducted randomly selected verification of prices recorded.