Consumers of bread in parts of Cross River State have lamented the ever-increasing price of bread and have appealed to master bakers not to carry out their threat to further increase product prices.

DAILY POST held random interviews with consumers, Saturday morning following a radio programme where a general manager of a bakery hinted that the association may soon increase the price of bread by another 50% as a result of the high costs of baking.

A respondent, Itam Inang said “We strongly appeal to them to appreciate our plights. We appreciate theirs. We understand what they go through during these hyperinflation times. But for many of us, our buying power is very low having not had any appreciable increase in our incomes.

“We need to eat bread. Presently, a family-sized loaf which goes for N800/N900 cannot go round my family of four. My children love eating bread. This is why I appeal to them not to increase the prices of bread again.”

Madam Esther Fidel, a teacher, similarly lamented that bread is now luxury food for the rich.

She appealed to the government to look at the inflation in the country for the sake of the common people.

“Government should pay attention to the ever-increasing prices of food items. We need their deliberate intervention to put down prices so that we can also eat bread.”

An official of the bakery association in the state, Fred Williams said that many bakers might reduce the quality of their bread products.

“Price of bread might likely increase very soon in Cross River State by 50%. This is owing to high costs of diesel to power our generators, high cost of bags of flour, sugar, oil etc.

“Before now, we used to buy power than N500 but now it is N700 per litre. Flour used to be N20,000 now it is N22,000 per bag. When you add transportation and other logistics, you cannot afford to bear such costs alone otherwise you will close shops.”