Rice at Tk 10 a kg for poor
The government is set to sell rice at Tk 10 per kilogram to 50 lakh poor households across the country from next month, a food ministry official said yesterday.
The food ministry has already prepared a policy to distribute rice to the rural poor at union levels during the lean periods of September-November and March-April.
Every year, during the five months, the target group will get 30 kilograms of rice a month. Some 5.5 lakh tonnes of rice have already been allocated for this purpose in this year's budget.
Ataur Rahman, joint secretary of the food ministry, has confirmed that the programme to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will start next month.
The food ministry has been working on the programme for the last several months and has already selected the beneficiaries at the union level, he said.
All the hardcore poor in Bangladesh will be brought under the programme, meaning about 2 crore people stand to benefit from it.
Presently, 12.9 percent of the total population is hardcore poor, he said.
On Sunday, the price of coarse rice at the retail level was Tk 34 to Tk 36 per kg, which means the poor will get a discount of Tk 24, according to the ministry report.
At present, the price of rice for open market sale is Tk 15 per kg. In future, OMS may not be required at all, according to Rahman. To distribute rice at discounted price, the food subsidy this year has been bumped up 43 percent to Tk 2,821 crore.
A major portion of the food subsidy may be spent for rice distribution programme for the poor, said a finance ministry official. “If the poor really get low-priced rice, it will be a big step toward reducing extreme poverty.”
Under the programme, women-led poor families -- particularly those of widowed, divorced or abandoned women -- will be given priority, said the guideline.
The extreme poor families with children will be given preference as well.
Those under the Vulnerable Group Development (VGD) programme of the government's social safety net scheme will not be included.
For selecting the beneficiaries, a five member committee will be formed at the upazila level, with a government official at the level acting as the head of the body.
The members of the committee will include the union parishad chairman and two noted persons of the union. An upazila level committee headed by the local lawmaker will scrutinise the list.
For every 500 households there will be a dealer, and the dealers will sell the rice to the target group as per the list prepared by the committee.
The government introduced a similar project in February 2011 to distribute rice at lower than the market price to the grassroots poor. Called the “fair price card” scheme, it is currently dormant.
As the market price of rice plummeted this year, the food grain was not selling much under the OMS.
Stocks piled up in the warehouses, which prompted the government to lower the OMS price several times to finally settle on the current price of Tk 15 per kg.
As a result, stocks declined slightly in recent times.
On August 24, rice stock in government warehouses stood at 7.56 lakh tonnes. A year earlier, it stood at 12.32 lakh tonnes of rice, according to data from the food ministry.