Naira depreciation pushes up prices of stationery – Dealers

Stationery dealers in Abuja have raised an alarm that the continued depreciation of the naira is affecting their businesses as it is pushing up the prices of stationeries and computer accessories.

When the Daily Trust visited some stationery outlets in Abuja, it checked the prices of some stationery items and compared them with their prices six months ago and discovered that prices had been hiked by 40 per cent to 50 per cent.

A stationery shop operator at the UTC Shopping Complex, Area 10 of the Garki axis of the nation’s capital, Desmond Orji, said the price hike affected all stationery and computer accessories, but the increase has not been reflected on some items which are of the old stock.

Our correspondent discovered that a ream of paper now sells for N900 as against the N600 it sold two months ago.

“The price of everything has gone up. Before, we were selling a carton of paper for N3,500 or N3,200, depending on how the customer bargained. But now, it is N4,200,” Orji disclosed.

He said prices of computer accessories such as hard drive, flash drive, cartridges, toner, ink and USB drive have also increased.

“Computer accessories I used to sell at N5,000 or N10,000 is now N15,000 or N14,000,” he said as he explained that prices of both stationeries and computer accessories skyrocketed in the last few months.

He said prices of highlighters, papers, calculators and adhesive gums have increased due to high cost of buying the products from the international market in the face of the continued depreciation of the nation’s currency.

“The naira is falling everyday and when you change it to the dollar, your money to buy goods will reduce. When the money reduces, you will end up buying fewer goods with the money you have. It is the importers who increase prices and not as if the prices were increased abroad. It is the weak naira that is the problem,” he explained.

By Tuesday, the naira value had dropped to N262 per a dollar at the black market while the official rate or the interbank rate as approved by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) remained stable at N199.2 per a dollar.

The Daily Trust visited some business centres in the city of Abuja to determine if the operators have increased the cost of printing and typing documents as a result of the increase in the price of office stationeries.

It was discovered that though the operators were not unaware of the price hike, they were yet to adjust upward the prices of their services.

In most places visited, operators charged between N10 and N20 for photocopying a document, N50 for printing a document and between N80 and N100 for typing and printing a document.

A business centre operator at Wumba, the Apo axis of Abuja, Uloma Amadi, explained that she could not increase the price of her services due to competition.

Amadi said there were three other business centres operating around her and increasing the cost of her services would make her lose her customers to other competitors. She complained that the increased cost of buying stationery, high cost of buying fuel for her generator at the black market due to fuel scarcity and the exorbitant bills she receives monthly for using power have eaten deep into her turnover.

She said the cost of running the business and suffocating competition are increasingly making it unattractive for start-ups.