<i>Bakery products still pricey </i>

Bakery food items.Photo: STAR

A number of bakeries and eateries in the port city have finally reduced prices of their items because of fall in prices of different raw materials and commodity items.
Such fall in prices, however, could not satisfy the consumers as the present prices are still higher campared to the fall in prices on raw materials like wheat, flour, edible oil, sugar and milk powder.
Several eateries like Highway Sweets and Confectionary, Bonoful, Fulkoli, Misti Mukh, Misti Mela and others have reduced prices of their bakery items from seven to 14 per cent.
Highway Sweets & Confectionary, a popular sweetmeat shop, has announced reduction in prices of its food items like loaf, biscuits and cakes early this month.
Salam, a salesman at the shop, said they are now selling 400 grams of loaf at Tk 25 and 200gm of bread Tk 13 which were Tk 30 and Tk 15 last month.
Prices of different types of biscuits have also come down, he said, adding that price of 350gm of dry cake has come down to Tk 65 from Tk 60, 350gm of special 'pound biscuit' to Tk 55 from Tk 50, 350gm of normal pound biscuit to Tk 45 from Tk 50, 400gm of butter toast to Tk 45 from Tk 50 and 300gm toast to Tk 30 from Tk 35.
Bonoful, another sweetmeat and confectionary shop, has also announced cut in prices of its different types of biscuits by Tk 5. A salesman at Bonoful said they have reduced around 11 percent to 16 percent in prices of different types of loaves.
He said 650gm of loaf is now sold at Tk 40 against the previous price of Tk 45, 450gm of loaf is sold at Tk 25 against Tk 35 while the price of 200gm of loaf has come down to Tk 16.
Ahmed Munir, a schoolteacher, said prices of bakery products should reduce more since prices of edible oil, flour and sugar have fallen to a greater extent during the last few months.
Prices of both the normal and finer quality wheat have dropped by 130 US dollar and 270 dollar per tonnes in the international market during the last four months.
Price of flour has dropped by Tk 400 to Tk 450 per mound, edible oil by Tk 1200 to Tk 1400 per maund during the last four months.
Md Ali, managing director of a leading importing firm Imam Group, said the bakery owners can reduce prices of their items up to 25 percent since prices of flour came down to Tk 800 per maund in the wholesale markets now while it was Tk 1200 in October. MA Motaleb, managing director of Bonoful, said they can't reduce the price of bread and biscuits more since prices of finer quality flour are still costly.
Super quality flour is being traded at Tk 1230 per maund, he added.
But the wholesalers at Khatunganj Wholesale market said prices of finer quality flour have also dropped by Tk 450 per maund and come down to Tk 1230 from Tk 1680.
When asked about the price of different sweetmeat, Bonoful owner Motaleb said they are yet to decide on reducing prices of sweetmeats since price of liquid milk is still higher.