Prices hit hard people with fixed, low income

Sohel Ahmed, a private-organisation employee, is struggling to maintain his five-member family with his monthly salary of Tk 30,000 following the hike in the prices of essential commodities ranging from onion to rice to sugar to flour.

He said that his monthly spending on food items increased by at least 10 per cent due to price rises with the start of the new fiscal year in July.

The upward price adjustment of household gas connection to Tk 975 from Tk 800 since August has added to his woes while the record onion price hike since mid-September and recent rice price rise made him struggle to foot the growing food bill.

Not only Sohel, but hundreds of thousands of fixed-income and low-income people were hard-pressed as the price of onion topped Tk 250 a kilogram this month from Tk 50 just one and a half months ago.

The government has been forced to fly in the commodity from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey to meet the supply shortage aggravated by the ban on export of the item by neighbouring India in early October.       

However, the price hike of rice by Tk 5 to Tk 8 per kilogram during the past one week or so despite sufficient stocks in the country and of atta by Tk 2 a kilogram came as a pain as the items account for a major portion of the daily food bill, according to rights activists and economists.

They told New Age on Sunday that the growing food bill would force people to go for belt tightening with cutting other expenditures like on health, education and recreation.

Consumer Association of Bangladesh president Gulam Rahman said that the majority population of the country was facing hardship because of the price hike of essentials.

He blamed the profit-mongering commodity traders and monitoring lapses by the government agencies for the situation in the poverty-prone country where an overwhelming 40 million people still live on less than 1.9 US dollar daily income.

The CAB is scheduled to hold a press briefing on Wednesday in the capital to highlight the responsibilities of traders and government bodies in controlling the essential commodity market.

Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies director general Dr Khan Ahmed Sayeed Murshid said that although the hike in prices of commodities was seasonal it impacted the life of a vast population.

He said that the rise in prices of rice and atta was always sensitive in our country since the items account for a major portion of the daily consumption.

According to the World Bank, poor people spend up to 50 per cent of their daily income on food.

Executive director Ahsan H Mansur of the Policy Research Institute said that the price hike of food items affects low- and fixed-income groups and also affects the other economic activities.

Many people risk being poor again due to food price hike, he said.

Food minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder at a discussion in the capital on Sunday admitted that the price of fine verity of rice increased slightly in the local market although there was no major supply shortage.

Available data show that the country’s current stocks of rice and wheat together stand at 14.59 lakh tonnes with 11 lakh tonnes of rice in government silos.

The food minister said that the food habit of Bangladeshi people was changing as more and more people wanted to eat fine rice and no one wanted to take coarse rice.

Commerce minister Tipu Munshi at the discussion said that the ban imposed by India was mainly responsible for supply shortage of inion in the local market.  

He admitted that they could have imported almost a one-fourth of the required one lakh tonne of onion during September and October.

Meanwhile, the prices of onion increased by Tk 10 a kilogram in the city markets on Sunday.

The local variety was selling for Tk 220-230 while the imported Egyptian varieties for Tk 130-140 and the Turkish varieties for Tk 140-150. 

The locally produced hybrid onion was retailing for Tk 210 while the Myanmar variety for Tk 190.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net