Rice prices to cool down in a week: Food secretary

Food Secretary Ismail Hossain hoped the prices of rice will come down in the local market within a week as the government will start selling rice and some other items at subsidised rates.

“We will begin selling rice at subsidised prices across the country from September 1 and around three lakh tonnes of rice will be sold per month under various programmes,” Hossain told Business Insider Bangladesh on Saturday.

He also claimed that there is an adequate stock of food grain in the country.

Earlier on Saturday at a roundtable programme organised by the Editors Guild, the food secretary said the country’s present food stock is the highest in the last 50 years.

“There are around 20 lakh tonnes of food grain in our stock,” he told this correspondent.   

When asked why the coarse rice price is so high – Tk 55 per kg - despite having the stock, he said the market price does not directly depend upon the stock.

“Traders and various mechanisms work in manipulating the price in the market,” he categorically said.

“The prices of rice have increased and we will have to confess it. The traders have increased the price under the pretext of fuel oil price hike. But we are working hard to bring the price down,” he said.

He said the OMS (open market sales) programme will begin after three days at around 2,400 OMS outlets across the country and each of over 50 lakh people will be given 30 kilograms of rice per month at Tk 15 per kilogram, much lower than the market price.

Apart from this, one more crore people will be given essential food items at subsidised prices, which he thinks will help to bring down the prices of food items, including rice, in the country, the bureaucrat said.

According to the data of the food ministry, the government procured 1,312 tonnes of Boro paddy, 8,653 tonnes of parboiled rice and 1,328 tonnes of atap (non-boiled) rice as of August 26, 2022.

Almost all countries in the world have been facing rising prices of commodities, including food after the supply chain disruption caused by the Russia-Ukraine war that began on February 24.

As Bangladesh is an import-dependent country for some essential food items, it is feeling the pinch the most. The depreciation of the local currency has pushed the import costs further higher by at least 10 percent in the last four months.