Alaul Alam :
Price hike of the essentials in Bangladesh without any logical ground is noticeably a common phenomenon. The poor and middle class people bear the most brunt of the increased price of the essentials as they cannot balance their income with expenditure. But in these days price hike of the necessities is not the occasional issue, rather has been an everyday phenomenon. The kitchen market is found to be on fire.
According to many, the kitchen market instability in the recent time has begun with the abnormal increase of edibles oil price. Several times the price of edible oil has increased in these days. This time the price of bottled soybean oil has reached a record high of Tk 198 per liter. Obviously, dissatisfactions are everywhere especially amid the poor and fixed income people.
The struggles of the low-income people in purchasing their necessities are being exposed regularly by the coverage of the mass media. Many people claim that they have reduced the use of edible oil in their family. Frustrations have deepened when we experience daily price hike of every essential.
The hike of price is not confined to some necessities such as coarse flour, red lentils, sugar, beef and edible oils, rather the price of all the essentials required for our survival have increased with their abnormal figures.It is obvious that syndicate business, dishonest business people and traders are so desperate to have profits many times than theyusuallyhave.They are always busy in making the kitchen market instable and fading the image of the government to the people. Things are like that the common consumers are the puppetsin the hands of the traders dealing in the essentials.
Not only that, the retail sellers across the country were found to store a huge amount of edible oil and sold them out with abnormally high price during that time in the name of crisis of edible oil in the kitchen market. Again things get frustrating when we see that there is no balance between the price hike in the wholesale and retail market.
General consumers purchase theirproducts from the nearby retail market and are compelled to pay significantly more thanthe price of whole sale market. The shop keepers see price hike and artificial crisis of any product as a boon as they get more scopes to be profited individually.
Undeniably, the poor hardly have their purchasing ability of soybean and many necessities in this unstable kitchen market. In most cases they live on the essentials subsidized heavily by the state. To help the financially vulnerable people Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) is supplying the essentials which are being reached to beneficiaries through local administrations across the country.
Not only the poor, the middle class people are finding no alternatives to collect their essentials from TCB vans and trucks. But despite standing in long que many cannot manage their essentials from TCB booths as the products sold there are insufficient than the demand of many more people suffering for losing their ability to buy their necessities with high price. Even the people with fixed income have curtained their expenditure though in many cases they fail to manage every essential with their fixed monthly budget.
The poor households in the country normally spend as much as 60 percent of their incomes on food. Due to the ongoing price hike of every essential they have no way left without spending more for the same. They undergo huge difficulties in managing foods for their households, let alone spending on clothes, shelter, medicines, education expenditure for their children. Even many struggle to survive reducing their daily intake of food which results in health vulnerability.
Undeniably, the unprecedented Covid -19 has rendered thousands of people jobless which is still a challenge for many countries. Bangladesh is not the exception to this. Sources claim that many people who lost jobs or business amid the Covid-19 hardly have recovered their financial state. Everyday price hike has deepened the woes of many people. Experts opine that if the price hike culture continues long, they will have no hopes but to accept long misery in their life. However, it is good to see that many initiatives of the government has created more opportunities for the people to stand individually and contribute to national economy.
Along with the ravages of the covid-19 the recent war between Ukraine and Russian has made the world economy instable to a great extent. Even the developed countries are bearing the brunt of food crisis in these days. In some countries the inflation rate has reached a worrying level. Many European countries are experiencing a significant inflation rate. Amid this dire global economy countries of the world are found busy in surviving themselves individually.
The inflation rate of Bangladesh is estimated 5.6 per cent which is not as worrying as many countries are. But things have no way to be overlooked. Again, a question may be pertinent that how can a moderate inflation rate in our country contributes to the reckless rise of price of daily essentials? Cannot we see any other factors in this connection?
In these days we see that the concerned market monitoring authorities are operating regular drives and taking actions against all odds related to price hike culture. But how have we been able to prevent the unscrupulous traders from their intentional market manipulation? To this end, to rein the reckless price hike there is no alternative to taking pragmatic measures which can save the communities undergoing unbearable difficulties due to regular price hike of daily commodities.
(Alaul Alam teaches at Prime University. He is also a research
scholar at the IBS).
