Dayo Ayeyemi 
Despite the relaxation of lockdown caused by COVID -19, retail prices of food items have continued to rise in the open market.
Some of the commodities, which retail prices have continued to surge, include yam, garri, flour, tomatoes, pepper and onions.
According to market’s survey by New Telegraph, prices of a basket of pepper, onions and tomatoes jumped to N12,000, N13,000 and N20,000 respectively from N8,000, N7,500 and N13,000 in April 2020.
These represent 50 per cent, 73.33 per cent and 53.85 per cent price increase of these three commodities between April and June 13, 2020.
Price of a medium tuber of yam at Mile 12 and Mowe markets surged between 1,400 and N1,550 from N1,200.
Also, price of a bag of flour jumped to N12,700 from N11,000 while the price for a 50 kilogramme of yellow garri rose to N15,000.
All these are coming when the pump price of petrol has been reduced to N121,00 per litre from N145,00.
The Managing Director, Financial Derivatives Company, Mr Bismarck Rewane, had stated that contrary to consensus expectation that prices would fall as output increases with a partial relaxation of the lockdown, commodity prices surprisingly surged.
He noted that the reduced petrol price also failed to translate into higher aggregate demand by consumers.
According to him, headline inflation would most likely continue its upward trajectory in the coming months mainly due to supply constraints.
This, he said, would be compounded by the new electricity tariffs, which is expected to kick-in on July 1.
He stated that the fall in aggregate demand could, however, slow the rate of increase as he attributed the surge in retail commodities to the combined effects of supply chain disruptions, planting season, higher logistics costs and exchange rate.
According to FDC and its think tank in the June Economic Bulletin, noticeable trends include the surge in the retail price of commodities that are price inelastic.
“We noticed a surge in the retail prices of commodities such as tomatoes, pepper and onions, that are relatively price inelastic,” they said.
The analysts said annual inflation was expected to increase towards 12.50 per cent as monthly inflation jumped to 15.73 per cent (annualized)
They pointed out that higher logistics costs was the major recipe for price differential.
In recent times, they said the reduction in the number of passengers that buses could carry had forced an abnormal spike in transportation fares.
They said: “This has resulted in price differential between the markets. The farther the markets are from the production points, the higher the chances of being impacted by rising logistics costs.
“On the average, commodity prices are approximately 15 per cent higher in Sura market than Oyingbo.”
They added that many analysts had anticipated an increase in aggregate demand due to the 14.83 per cent reduction in the pump price of PMS.
The FDC analysts said: “The impact of this was however muted by the sharp fall in consumers’ disposable income due to the covid-induced economic paralysis.
“Commodity prices remained high in spite of a fall in disposable income. A fallout of the Covid-19 and the lockdown measures was a significant loss in jobs and a drop in aggregate disposable income.”
“According to the NBS, the Covid-19 impact monitoring report, 42 per cent of the
