The Competition and Fair Trading Commission (CFTC) has described 2021 as the most challenging year on enforcing fair and competitive trading practices in the country.

CFTC acting executive director Apoche Itimu has singled out the Coronavirus pandemic as the major setback that the Commission suffered during the year.

“This has been a challenging year especially because we had the Covid-19 pandemic most especially at the beginning of 2021, we could not really conduct our market enquiries and shop inspections as we usually do because of the restrictions that we had,” said Itimu.

“But nonetheless we still try to engage consumers and traders through other platforms online, we also found that there were some traders especially pharmacies that took advantage of the consumers during that period by overpricing some products, the Commission came in and issues some fines.”

Itimu has however expressed delighted on consumer awareness during the year citing that the Commission received more complaints which is an apparent indication that consumers are aware that they can be assisted by CFTC.

“We found out that there is been a rise as well in consumer complaints, I believe this is largely to do with awareness of consumers about their rights,” said Itimu.

“As well as the fact that part of 2020 we did not have commissioners who were appointed later in November 2020 so for about a year also we were not able to make any determination, so as we started making determinations again, we have seen that there is been a rise in numbers of consumer complaints.”