48,000 tonnes rice import okayed
The advisers' committee on purchase yesterday approved procurement of 48,000 tonne of rice from local importers at a price higher than the local market to supplement the government's rice stock during the post-flood period.
"As we need to increase the supply of rice to the local market, the stocks should be strengthened by importing rice," Finance Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam, who chaired a meeting of the committee, said.
Sources in the meeting said the government is also considering to resume money-for-work programme after the flood along with the food-for-work programme as prices of food items are high and the government stocks of food grain is not satisfactory.
Mirza Azizul said, "We are yet to decide whether we will launch food-for-work or money-for-work programme. We may also launch a mixed programme."
He said the budget for the current fiscal year has allocated two lakh tonne rice for food-for-work programme and now the government is considering an option to divert a part of the allocation to money-for-work programme in the rural areas. Sources said during the BNP-Jamaat government's rule donors forced to postpone the money-for-food programme due to corruption and irregularities in distributing money.
Sources said the government will buy rice from 33 local importers at a cost of Tk 123.23 crore, and the price of per kilogram rice will be from Tk 24.99 to Tk 25.97.
Early this month, the government purchased 50,000 tonne rice from India at a cost of Tk 24.50 per kilogram.
"Importers will bear the cost of transportation from ports to the government warehouses and that is why the prices are a bit higher than the local market," Aziz said.
The committee members also decided to procure 2.62 lakh tonne urea fertiliser.
The finance adviser said the government has a plan to import 6.5 lakh tonne urea for the current fiscal year. The government has already imported 3.12 lakh tonne urea and an approval has been made to import another 2.62 tonne. "We hope there will be no crisis of urea this year," he said.
The meeting also approved a proposal for purchasing network servers, LAN and Intranet equipment and standard software at a cost of Tk 70 crore for a Bangladesh Bank project named "Central Bank strengthening project".
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