Sagar Biswas :
Price of rice is touching new high while about half a million new Rohingya refugees have been given shelter on humanitarian grounds in the country’s southeastern bordering district of Cox’s Bazar. But the government is trading blame game instead of tackling the situation.
Consumers not only from lower and middle income classes but also the affluent people have been hard hit by the skyrocketing price of rice in the last few days. Particularly, the poor people are facing acute crisis in procuring rice.
According to the Department of Agricultural Marketing, per kg retail price of coarse rice is now sold in retail market at Tk 50 per kg. The price went up by Tk 2/3 per kg in wholesale markets.
Against this backdrop, the government has called the millers and leaders of rice traders’ association on Tuesday [19 September] for a meeting to get a solution over the crisis. Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed and Agriculture Minister Motia Chowdhury will be present there.
Wholesale traders have categorically blamed low supply from the rice mills as the primary reason for the price hike. Besides, they pointed at the recent floods, soaring paddy prices, high import cost, lack of market monitoring and road transportation difficulties as other big reasons behind the rice price hike.
Amid huge criticism, Quamrul Islam went to Myanmar a few days ago to sign a deal to import 1-3 lakh tonnes of rice from Myanmar on G-to-G level.
Earlier on August 10, Dhaka and Bangkok had signed a MoU with Thailand to import up to 10 lakh metric tonnes of rice each year till 2021.
Not only that, another MoU was also signed on May 23 between Bangladesh and Vietnam to buy one million tonnes of rice each year. At the same time, the Bangladeshi side wanted to buy 250,000-300,000 tonnes of 5-per cent broken rice and a total of 500,000 tonnes by the end of 2017.
In the meantime, the government has imported 250,000 tonnes of rice from Vietnam which has sent different warehouses across the country. Officials said around 675,000 tons of rice so far has been imported in this fiscal. Of which the government imported 155,000 tons and the rest by the private traders.
But in fact, these efforts did not create any positive impact on the market. Though earlier hundreds of metric tons of rice were exported to Bangladesh from Burma daily, now the situation has also changed.
There are widespread allegations that rice price is now reaching high due to “syndicating business” some influential rice mill owners in connivance with some dishonest Food Ministry officials and members of local administration.
Strangely, Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed and Food Minister Quamrul Islam recently have blamed journalists for the unbridled price hike of rice. Both the ministers questioned the responsibility of the journalists who are “disseminating information” of the rice price hike.
Claiming that there is no shortage of rice in the country, Tofail Ahmed assured that India hasn’t stopped exporting rice and they have over 10 million tonnes of rice for export.
On the other hand, the Food Minister recently said currently there are 10 million tonnes of rice in the country and there is no crisis of rice. “There is no reason of such a price hike,” he said.
Quamrul also blamed media for rice price hike, saying that vested quarters were doing politics with the price of rice. “They are trying to confuse the people. The importers brought 600,000 tonnes of rice from India after the government had decreased duty,” he said.
To tackle the situation, the government has launched Open Market Sale (OMS), under which rice will be sold at Tk 30 per kg. Side by side, the local administration has started conducting raids in the biggest rice godowns so that the millers could not stockpile the food grains.
Officials said the government has directed the deputy commissioners and police supers to conduct drives against illegal hoarders of rice who are tarnishing the image of the government.
