THE increasing cost of groceries and provisions has affected hamper sales ahead of the yuletide.
Our reporter, who visited some shops and markets in Lagos, found a drop in hamper sales compared to previous years.
At the Mushin market provision sales section, only two women had gift hampers displayed for sale in their stores.
The first woman, simply identified as Mrs Ayo, had only four gift hampers.
They sold at between N10,000 and N15,000.
Some of the content for the N15,000 basket include: cornflakes, oats, butter cookies, beverages, ice tea drink, custard, milk and others.
The content of the N10,000 hamper included: a packet of biscuit, pasta, a 200g beverage, wheat flour, tea and a few others.
Asked about the nature of hamper sales this year compared to last year, Mrs Ayo said: “Sales is dull this year.
“It’s nothing compared to previous years because the prices of provisions and goods generally have sky-rocketed.
“Because of that, there’s no rush. You can see there is no customer here right now, though I have sold a few hampers this morning.
“But sales is nothing like the other years.”
Moving further down the market, a woman, who identified herself as Iya Bolu, who had more gift hampers on display, was seen attending to a customer as she gathered different items into a basket at the customer’s direction.
On approaching her concerning the outlook of sales this year, she said it has not been very favourable.
According to her, last year was better, but she was thankful to God for the sales so far.
“We thank God, but last year, market was a whole lot better,” said Iya Bolu.
She also revealed the prices of her gift hampers, with the highest selling at N25,000 (content included few foreign items like the cookies, rolled oats, beverage (1000kg),milk (1000kg), wine and few other stuffs.
The lowest, which was selling for N6,000, had a packet of cabin biscuit, pasta, corn flakes, one evaporated milk, tea bag and a sizeable bottle of orange juice and tissue paper.
The other prices in between were N10,000 and N18,000 with varying content.
