Business Desk :
With job losses and salary cuts, and a price hike in essentials, 77% of the population is hurting. The remaining 23%, the ultra-rich, the rich, and the upper-middle class, remains quite unscathed by the pandemic, said speakers.
If a family’s spending for essentials such as rice, oil, and sugar increases by Tk1,000, the impact is bound to be felt not only in food consumption but also in other expenses, they said at a webinar on Sunday, organised by the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB).
Razequzzaman Ratan, central committee leader of Samajtantrik Sramik Front, presented the keynote paper at the programme titled “consumer rights in the face of rising prices of goods and services.”
First, price hikes force people to trim their spending on food. Then they try to adjust and survive by putting a hold on non-food spending, including health and education, Razequzzaman Ratan said in his keynote.
He said the cut in spending results in a weaker domestic market as people’s purchasing power dictates how strong the market will be.
Referring to the labour force survey, the keynote said the number of working people in Bangladesh is around 6.82 crore on whom the entire country’s population of 17 crore depend for food and other expenses.
As said in the keynote, “Of the workforce, people who belong to the low-income bracket spend as much as 62% of income on food alone. With a fall in income and multiple hikes in commodity prices, the pandemic has appeared as a double whammy for them.”
The programme also noted that no wages were adjusted in 32 sectors since 2013, though they are supposed to be adjusted every five years in a total of 43 sectors.
CAB President Ghulam Rahman said an unbearable situation surfaces if commodity prices go up and incomes go down. Most people in the country are now facing this situation prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said the government has rolled out some stimulus packages and incentives, but employment is not growing. If new jobs are not generated, consumption will not increase. If consumption does not increase, production will plummet.
He said low production will drive up commodity prices, and that will ultimately put a fresh squeeze on consumers. Ghulam Rahman urged the government to immediately intervene and break the vicious cycle.
