Bank of Industry (BoI) has announced the launch of a mobile application to monitor real-time food prices in eight states across the country.
BoI announced on Thursday that the web version of the app, Pricesense.ng, will allow users to check wholesale and retail prices of food items such as rice, beans, tomatoes and maize in different states across the country.
The states available in the application are Borno, Plateau, Rivers, Oyo, FCT, Lagos, Enugu and Kano.
The app also provides analysis of food prices across brand types, quantities, and different dates of the year.
The BoI said the initiative was taken as food prices continued to rise over the past year, with food inflation exceeding 40% in June 2024.
The country’s current food crisis is believed to be a combination of erratic weather patterns, instability in food-producing areas, and the high cost of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer.
Various international development agencies, including the World Bank, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FA0), have predicted that there will be a record number of food insecure people in the country in 2024.
The World Bank notes that approximately seven states in Nigeria will experience severe hunger, while FAO estimates that up to 32 million Nigerians, most of them women and children, will be food insecure in 2024. He pointed out that there is.
Federal efforts to quell the crisis include authorizing duty-free imports of food for 150 days and distributing grain to all 36 member states.
The Federal Government has also reportedly started selling rice at a discounted price of N40,000 per 50kg bag.
