Al Amin :
Low-income group of people are struggling to maintain their families’ daily expenditure due to the price hike of the most key essential commodities.
In fact, they are being forced to go for belt tightening with cutting other expenditures like on health, education and recreation owing to the abnormal hike in prices of the essentials amid the ongoing corona pandemic.
Rights bodies said that the government has failed to free the kitchen markets from the syndicate and the people’s suffering may further increase in the coming days as their earnings have reduced to a great extent because of the coronavirus.
The prices of the daily essential commodities like rice, onion, edible oil, pulse, egg and vegetables have continued to register an upward trend in the last one month.
Sohel Ahmed, a private-organisation employee, is struggling hard to maintain his five-member family with his monthly salary of Tk 30,000 following the price hike of everyday commodities.
He said that his monthly spending on kitchen items increased by at least 10 per cent due to price hike.
Not only Sohel, hundreds of thousands of fixed-income and low-income groups of people are hard-pressed for spending on food items.
Ahsan H Mansur, Executive Director of the Policy Research Institute, told The New Nation that the price hike of food items affects low- and fixed-income groups and also affects the other economic activities.
Many people risk being poor again due to food price hike, he said.
Traders said a three-phase natural calamity-COVID-19 pandemic, long term flood and excessive rains are making the country’s rice market volatile.
The fear of staple shortage deepened after multiple natural disasters hit the crops. Excessive rainfall in March-April, cyclone Amphan in the month of May and consecutive floods in June- July damaged crops, of which 70 per cent is paddy.
On the other hand, following the price hike of essentials, people now have to spend extra money for house rent, transport fare, treatment cost, educational expenditure and others.
When people accused the hoarders and dishonest traders of manipulating price hike, the traders blame the government for lack of market monitoring and surveillance against the wholesale market manipulators.
The price of rice has increased by Tk 5 to Tk 8 per kilogram during the past one week or so, despite sufficient stocks in the country. Besides, the increase price of flour (atta) by Tk 2 a kilogram came as a pain as the items account for a major portion of the daily food bill, according to rights activists and economists.
They said that the growing food bill would force people to go for belt tightening with cutting other expenditures like on health, education and recreation.
Consumer Association of Bangladesh President Gulam Rahman said that the majority population of the country was facing hardship because of the price hike of essentials.
He blamed the profit-mongering commodity traders and monitoring lapses by the government agencies for the situation in the country where an overwhelming 40 million people still live on less than Tk 250 daily income.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies Director General Dr Khan Ahmed Sayeed Murshid said that although the hike in prices of commodities was seasonal it impacted the life of a vast population.
He said that the rise in prices of rice and atta was always sensitive in our country since the items account for a major portion of the daily consumption.
