This study was carried out to analyze the perceived influence of new minimum wage implementation on marketing of rice and sorghum in Makurdi Local Government Area of Benue State. Public opinion survey design was adopted for the study; multi-stage sampling technique was used to select 137 respondents from the study area. Data for the study were source mainly from primary source with the aid of questionnaire. Descriptive statistic were tools for data analysis. Results showed that majority (62.8%) of the rice and sorghum marketers were female majority (89.8%) were married with an average household size of 5 persons. The result further showed that high costs of transporting rice and sorghum with the mean value of 4.09 was the major perceived influence of new minimum wage implementation on marketing of rice and sorghum in the study area, followed by high cost of production and processing of rice and sorghum for marketing (x ̅=3.80) and as well as increase in buying and selling of rice and sorghum (x ̅=3.28) due to increase in the purchasing power of the customers as a result of the new minimum wage implementation. Also the result showed that the quantity of rice marketed before minimum wage implementation was 86.15bags while after minimum wage implementation was 70.96bags, the annual income before minimum wage implementation was N6, 260,583.94 and after implementation was N5, 210,051.09; yearly operational cost before minimum wage implementation was N416, 642.34 and after implementation was N720, 802.92, quantity of sorghum marketed before minimum wage was 36.06bags and after implementation was 27.36bags, annual income before minimum wage implementation was N2,016,496.35 and after was N2,326,817.52, yearly operational cost before minimum wage implementation was N188, 175.18 and after was N240,882.35. It was concluded that implementation of new minimum wage impacts rice and sorghum marketers in various form, ranging from reduction in market size, increase in cost of transportation, increase in yearly operational costs and reduction in the number of hired labourers engaged. It was recommended that rice and sorghum marketers should leverage on the existing markets association to subsidize means of transportation of their market produce by providing association alternate means of transportation instead of relying on the general means of transportation of rice and sorghum and ease the cost of transportation.
Adikwu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.