Despite all the hoopla, the government has seemingly failed to break the back of price manipulators of essential commodities. This has indicated that people will not get a relief from the skyrocketing price hikes of necessary products during the upcoming holy month of Ramadan.
This is fairly common in our country that hoarders and traders take advantage of increased demand of some essential kitchen items during Ramadan. And every time, they explain some trivial whys and wherefores behind the rise of commodity prices and the most common cliché they said is the supply shortage.
In reality, it has been proven over and over again that though there is little or no supply shortage of certain product in the market, hoarders and stockists create artificial crisis of that commodity in order to fleece consumers.
And every time, these unscrupulous traders and businessmen form an unholy nexus called syndicate under the very nose of concerned monitoring agencies like the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB). Consumers are used to seeing some cosmetic actions by CAB in case of sudden price spike of a product by raiding and fining some warehouses.
Like previous warnings, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Sunday during the opening of the Deputy Commissioners (DC) Conference-2024 came up with another similar warning by ordering field-level administrations to take stern action against illegal hoarders and ensure smooth supply of essentials to consumers during the upcoming month of Ramadan.
Admittedly, the highest echelon of the country said that there are some businesses that always want to make extra profit by hoarding essential products. They rake in crores of Taka by ripping off consumers showing some peripheral causes which are blatantly implausible. Even, they dare to defy government orders and instructions every now and then.
For instance, after waiving certain import duty, the Commerce Ministry on February 20 reduced the price of soybean oil, fixing the bottled edible oil at Tk 163 per liter and loose soybean oil at Tk 149 a liter. But this edible oil is being still sold at higher rate than the governments fixed price.
Another essential kitchen item is onion and its price has continued to spike despite governments initiative to import this spice from India in a special arrangement as there has been an export ban on it by the Indian government. A kg of onion is now sold in the retail market at around Tk 130.
Not only the prices of edible oil and onion have been on the rise, there are price hikes in almost all other essential products like sugar, edible oil, beef, lentil, anchor dal, kesari dal, gram and vegetables. This means that consumers will not be relieved of price spike in this years Ramadan
We believe that there is still time to bring essentials prices under control during Ramadan by bringing price manipulators to book for their misdeeds.
