Manufacturers have expressed concerns as the price of diesel has risen to N1,275 per litre in Lagos and above N1,300 outside the state, Daily Trust reports.
The product sells for N1,270 per litre in Kano state and above that outside the metropolis.
This implies a 26 per cent increase in the price of the product in less than one week. It had sold for N1,030 on the 23rd of October.
As of Thursday, many filling stations in Lagos yesterday had adjusted their price to between N1,250 and N1,270.
A bakery owner, Ibrahim Nagode, said: “The price keeps increasing on a daily basis. You can buy it in the morning for a certain price, and in the evening, you are told that the price has changed.”
“We were planning to buy diesel yesterday, and we have planned our budget on the rate we bought it the last time only to be told that the price is now N1,275,” said another source.
Commenting on the situation, the Chief Executive Officer of Golden Rice Mill, Ilya Nazifi, said since logistics and power are affected, the cost of production and prices of finished goods would go up.
A transporter in Lagos, Wada Jamilu, said with the increase in the price of the product, a trailer would consume diesel worth N1.5m to travel from Kano to Lagos and come back.
He said owners of trailers would have to increase their transportation fares.
The president of the Premium Bread Makers Association of Nigeria, Emmanuel Onuorah, said the hike in the price of diesel might force factories to shut down.
“The price has increased since Monday. For us as bakers, the implication of that we keep increasing our prices. As long as everything keeps increasing, we would keep adding money to our product so that we can recover costs.
“You can’t do anything again. Flour today is about N43,000. Every day, they would put N5000, N10,000 on one line item. Manufacturers will shut down; industries will shut down.
“As I am talking to you, I am sitting in my factory. Everybody will close up. Anybody who cannot do it again will pack up and leave. It is tough. The crisis is coming,” he stated.
A professor of Entrepreneurship Development and Lagos state chairman of the National Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, Adams Adebayo, warned that the rising cost of diesel is dangerous for the economy.
He said, “The economy is in a serious shamble. It has never been this bad in the last 20 years. This is the worst that has ever happened. If diesel price has gone up, it has really affected everybody.
“What we will do now is that all the manufacturers would shut down. Except the government decides to subsidize the power and direct the electricity distribution companies to supply to the manufacturers at a rate being controlled by the government, there would be problems,” he said.
