THE month of holy Ramzan starts from today in Bangladesh as it starts rolling in other Muslim countries about the same time. We welcome the country’s Muslim population for entering into the daylong fasting to exercise restraints and self-sacrifice to attain purification of the body and soul. Ramzan calls for a life without hostility and greed and we would call upon the people to uphold the spirit of fasting by promoting virtues and keeping away from evils and wrong-doings. The nation expects everybody would maintain peace and harmony shunning political violence throughout the month and do everything to make the life of the fasting population – rich and the poor – comfortable and easier by keeping the market steady. The most important thing in this month is to maintain abundant supply of essentials in the market and the prices at the low. But as we see most traders have already taken the advantage of early Ramzan to raise prices of vegetables and other essentials at some boiling point. This is not compatible with the spirit of sacrifice. A true Muslim and people from any religion can’t hold a whole fasting population hostage by artificially creating supply shortfall and asking soaring prices when people want to buy more and eat things of their choice. There is no better way other than self-restraints by vendors, shopkeepers and wholesalers and the government agencies must act quickly to hold them back from creating artificial shortages. Moreover, people tend to believe that the Commerce Ministry is in a position to make the plea to the business community to keep away from exploiting the situation asking exorbitant prices. Side by side, heightened vigilance by members of the intelligence and law enforcing agencies must be maintained on supply line and stock position at wholesale and retailers level to defeat any move for supply crisis. Mobile Court may also run unannounced visit to market to check supply and prices. The market remains hot with some basic supplies like dates, grams, edible oil, onion, sugar and fruits. The government monitors the supply; which soars from two months before the arrival of Ramzan. Fish, chicken and meat are also on high demand. But there is hardly any scope to befool the people unless some political leaders, law enforcers and traders join hands together to exploit the situation. So a firm political commitment of the government is also required to keep hold on the market.The government has also some market intervention mechanism in hand like open market sale at city points of some essentials to restraints prices in big markets. TCB is also mandated to import and maintain strategic stock of essentials as part of market intervention measures. What is noticeable is that the market can’t go wrong if the government wants to keep it on the right track. Let us hope that the market will behave peacefully.
