Spiralling Food Prices: Low-income group half-fed
For Razia Sultana, a 50-year-old widow with three children to look after and a Tk 22,000 of fixed monthly income, every paisa counts.
And the ongoing price spiral of daily essentials has left her double-counting every paisa that she spends.
Which is why, she braved indignation and scorching temperature yesterday to stand in a queue for about two hours to buy 5 kilogram of rice and 3 kg of flour from an open market sales truck parked near her home in East Kazipara.
She would be able to save Tk 131.
"This is humiliating for me but I had no other option," said Sultana, whose family has halved their food intake since the price spiral and stopped eating meat.
A kg of rice costs Tk 30 at the OMS truck run by the Directorate General of Food -- Tk 22 less than at the retail level.
Similarly, a kg of flour costs Tk 23 at the truck in contrast to Tk 30 elsewhere.
Behind Sultana in the queue was Sumana Begum, a housemaid in the Shewrapa area of the capital.
Her family's situation is even worse: after paying for rent and her son and mother-in-law's treatment, she does not have much left for food.
"We are going hungry," said Sumona, whose husband is a day labourer.
Like Sultana and Sumana, the low- and middle-income group are making do with the food price hike by reducing their intake of proteins.
Food prices have been on a upward trend all year. In August, food inflation rose to 5.16 percent, up eight basis points from a month earlier, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
In the last couple of weeks, the prices of sugar, flour, chicken, fish, cooking oil, spices and vegetables have gone up due to supply constraints amid recovering demand from the pandemic and soaring prices in the international commodity market.
Visiting the kitchen markets at Kawran Bazar, Mirpur-1, Shewrapara and Kazipara in the capital yesterday, the correspondents found that broiler chicken was selling for Tk 170 a kg, up from Tk 140 a fortnight ago.
The farm's chicken eggs were seen selling at Tk 115-120 a dozen, up from Tk 110-115 a dozen seven weeks earlier.
The average prices of fish price have also soared have increased by Tk 20-100 per kg, said Sumon, a fish trader in the Karwan Bazar.
The price of onion has been increased by at least Tk 30 per kg within a week. Yesterday, the essential cooking ingredient was selling at Tk 75 to Tk 85 per kg.
Also, the prices of most vegetables have gone up by Tk 5-10 per kg in the last one week.
The price of tomatoes has gone up from Tk 100 to Tk 120 per kg last week but now it is selling at Tk 150 to Tk 160 per kg.
The price of carrots has increased by at least Tk 10 in a week to Tk 150 while green chilli was selling at Tk 200 per kg.
"The vegetable prices usually remain high every October due to shortage of supply," said Ghulam Rahman, president of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh.
But in the case of other products, including oil, sugar, flour, the prices in the local market have gone up much more than that in the international market.
"Our traders hike prices on the pretext of international market prices," he said.