High demand fuels potato prices
Potato prices began to rise last week, especially after the Eid festival, as many people are forced to substitute other increasingly costlier vegetables with the tuber.
Prices of potato, one of the mostly consumed vegetables, increased 17 percent to Tk 25-Tk 30 a kilogram in Dhaka on Saturday, from Tk 22-Tk 25 a month ago, according to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.
"Low production has pushed up prices of vegetables this year,” said Rahidul Islam, a vegetable stockist and wholesaler at Mahasthan Bazar in Bogra, a wholesale vegetable depot in northwestern Bangladesh. The surrounding area is a major producer of the tuber.
“It appears that some consumers are buying larger quantities of potato because of high prices of other vegetables.”
Rahid had stored more than 300 tonnes of potato in cold storages to sell for higher prices in the off-peak season.
Prices are unlikely to decline until supplies of early varieties of potatoes start arriving in December, Islam said.
Prices of most vegetables have been high over the past two months due to crop losses from heavy rainfall and recurrent floods.
Most of the vegetables in the city are priced at more than Tk 50 per kg.
The TCB recorded the fresh price spiral of potato, the second biggest crop of Bangladesh behind rice, after the Eid-ul-Azha festival on September 25.
A lack of availability of transport is also a factor behind higher prices, said Md Jasim Uddin, president of Bangladesh Cold Storage Association (BCSA).
"Farmers have stored lower quantities of potato this year than the previous year," he said.
Some 35 lakh tonnes of the vegetable, including seed potato, have been stored in cold storages this year, down from nearly 50 lakh tonnes the previous year, according to BCSA.
Farmers were reluctant to store larger amounts because of low quality of the harvest as well as the losses incurred last year.
Many farmers lost money during early harvest of potato this year, hit hard by the almost three-month blockade enforced by BNP and allies since January 5.
Traders and farmers began to release tubers from cold storages in July.
Potato prices usually go up at the end of the season, Jasim said.
"It is nothing to get upset about, and potato prices are still lower than most other vegetables," he said.
An 84-kilogram sack of potato cost Tk 1,400 after Eid, up from Tk 1,300-1,350 prior to the occasion, said Mostofa Azad Chowdhury, managing director of Motahar Group of Industries, which owns nine cold storages.
Prices of potato were high during the storage season early this year on speculation of reduced yield due to rainfall, he said.
The intense competition among cold storage operators to fill up their warehouses also fuelled prices, he said.
Farmers, however, are not making money despite the rise in demand and price.
"A lion's share of the increased prices is pocketed by the retailers and wholesalers," Chowdhury said.
Farmers bagged 92.5 lakh tonnes of potato in fiscal 2014-15, up from 89.5 lakh tonnes in the previous year, according to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
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