A shopper buys maize flour at a supermarket in Nyeri. PHOTO | FILE
Millers have kept up flour prices even after they were allocated more than 500,000 bags of cheap maize by the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB).
A spot check by the Business Daily revealed that the prices have almost remained the same for brands other than Jogoo which has shed Sh5 to sell at Sh110 currently.
The government released a million bags of maize in June in effort to tame the soaring cost of the staple but its impact is yet to be felt.
The NCPB said it had sold about 640,000 bags of maize to the millers by yesterday to supplement the falling stocks that sparked price increase.
“We have so far released more than 600,000 bags of maize to the millers and we hope they will be purchasing the remaining bags,” said managing director Newton Terer.
Maize is a staple food whose price play a significant role in determining the cost of living for households.
Panic over falling factory stock of maize has seen millers’ adjusting their ex-factory prices upwards in the last two months. In July, inflation rate rose to 6.39 per cent, up from 5.8 per cent in June.
Over the period, the food and non-alcoholic drinks’ Index rose by 1.12 per cent, latest cost of living data produced by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicates.
In an interview, Agriculture secretary Willy Bett says the State this year set the price of maize at Sh2,300 from Sh2,800 last year to allow millers to acquire their stocks at a lower cost and pass the same benefits to consumers.
“There was no justification at all for millers to raise the cost of flour when maize prices have been relatively cheap this year,” said Mr Bett.
The government normally sets the price of maize that is purchased by the NCPB to act as a benchmark for the market price.
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