Special Correspondent :
With onion prices showing no sign of decline and other commodity prices also going up, three key ministers with the portfolios of Commerce, Industries and Food will sit for an emergency meeting today (Sunday) to brainstorm over the issue.
Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi will chair the meeting, involving all stakeholders, to discuss the root causes of the problem and set strategies to cool down market prices of the essentials.
The meeting will review the overall production, stock, supply of the commodities and their price situation in the market and discuss a mechanism to fix their logical price, according to a FBCCI press release issued on Saturday.
National Board of Revenue Chairman Md Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, representatives of Bangladesh Tariff Commission, Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection, Competition Commission and FBCCI leaders will also attend the meeting, to be held at the FBCCI headquarters in the capital at 12 noon.
Currently, retail onion prices across the country have been hovering around Tk 180-200 per kg, even if import of the key cooking staple from Turkey, Myanmar, Egypt and Pakistan.
When such a situation is prevailing, a fresh rise in rice, edible oil and some other essentials continue to rise in the market causing much dissatisfaction to the government high-ups and the consumers as well.
“The ministers will meet to review prices of essential commodities and try to figure out the reason behind the surge and then decides on measures to be taken to rein them in,” an anonymous Commerce Ministry official told The New Nation yesterday.
He said the ministry will work in tandem with the industries, and food ministries to ensure that commodity prices are kept under check.
Regarding high prices of the essential commodity in the market, he said, the government has been trying to tackle the issue with utmost sincerity.
