Food Prices: Not coming down soon
The shroud of pandemic gloom is finally lifting after a solid year and a half. But for ordinary citizens, that is bringing no solace with the prices of everyday essentials spiralling -- beyond their means.
And this run of bad luck would not be ending anytime soon if Commerce Secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh's comments to reporters are anything to go by after an emergency meeting yesterday with traders on the current stock, the supply and price situation of sugar, edible oil, onion and lentil.
Take the price of onion, a key cooking ingredient, which, like clockwork, seems to see a price spiral every year.
This year's turn of price spiral is taking place now, and Ghosh said the high price will continue over the next one month until the harvesting of local variety of onion.
The onion prices have gone up in Bangladesh because of rainfall in India, he said.
India is the largest source of onions for Bangladesh. Over in the neighbouring country, the price of onion soared to Rs 55 a kg from Rs 30 last week, reports The Times of India.
And yet, the commerce ministry's own data suggests there is an adequate supply of the locally grown root vegetable, which begs the question: why the skyrocketing prices?
In the past month, the price of the homegrown onion soared 55.9 percent and the imported one 47.1 percent, according to data from the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.
Yesterday, onion was selling for Tk 70-75 per kilogram in the local markets.
In fiscal 2020-21, about 21 lakh tonnes of onion was produced against the target of 8.2 lakh tonne. This is supplanted by imports of another 7 lakh tonne.
Bangladesh's annual demand for onion is 25 lakh tonnes.
Of the locally-grown produce, 4.2 lakh tonne remains in stock.
"The traders are holding on to the stock and are releasing them slowly," said a vegetable trader at the capital's Kawran Bazar wholesale market.
About 1,500 tonnes of onion will be released from the Chattogram port soon for taming the skyrocketing prices of the item in the local markets, Ghosh said.
The commerce ministry has sent a letter to the National Board of Revenue to withdraw the 5 percent duty on the import of onion to amp up the supply of the vegetable in the markets.
Moreover, the government is trying to import onion from Myanmar to meet the demand, he added.
In a similar vein, the price of soybean oil has edged up 3.8 percent and that of palm oil about 5 percent over the past month.
Yesterday, a litre of soybean oil was selling for Tk 135-140 and palm oil for Tk 125-130.
The price of edible oil went up in the local markets because of a price hike in the international markets, according to Ghosh.
Of Bangladesh's annual demand of 20 lakh tonne for edible oil, 90 percent is catered by imports.
In the international market, the price of palm oil has gone up 14.7 percent in the past month and 65.4 percent in the last year.
However, the price of soybean oil has dropped 3.5 percent in the international market in the past month. It went up 19.9 percent in the last year.
The price of sugar has gone up too.
A kg of the sweetener is now selling for Tk 79-80, up 29.2 percent year-on-year, according to TCB data.
Both Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi and Ghosh attributed the rise to a price hike in the international markets, on which the country is fully dependent to meet the annual demand of 18 lakh tonnes.
In the international markets, the price of sugar has spiralled 7.3 percent in the past month and about 47.2 percent in the last year.
Every year, the state-owned sugar mills process about 30,000 tonnes of sugar from the cane.
But wholesalers at Kawran Bazar told The Daily Star that the cane sugar is out of market.
The price of sugar may decline soon as the government has taken measures, Ghosh said, without elaborating on the measures taken.
Lentil, another widely-consumed item, has become dearer in the past year: its prices have gone up from 16.5 percent to 29.6 percent, according to data from the TCB.
In the local markets, it is now selling at Tk 90-110 a kg, some Tk 5-10 more than last week.
Bangladesh's annual demand for lentils is 5 lakh tonnes, of which 74 percent is met through imports.
"Importers are holding on to the stock," said Md Russel, the manager of Bismillah Store in Kawran Bazar.
For wholesalers like Russel, the price hike of commodities is cutting deep.
"People have simply cut back on their consumption," he said.
Previously, he would log in sales of at least Tk 1 lakh a day. That has now come down to Tk 40,000-50,000 -- insufficient to meet his overheads.
Like Russel, the other sellers in Kawran Bazar are crestfallen as their sales have crashed with the price spiral.
Save for dates, duck eggs, medium-grain rice, the prices of all products have crept up in the past week.
When viewed against the 22 percent price hike of liquefied petroleum gas, the fuel of choice for cooking in most households in the face of scarcity of piped gas connection, one must wonder how the low- and middle-income groups are getting by with their fixed income.
In August, inflation stood at 5.54 percent, up 18 basis points from the previous month, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
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