With the onset of winter, vegetables prices have shown signs of easing but the price of one of the most essential items, edible oil, has shot up unexpectedly in the face of sudden supply crunch in the kitchen markets across the country.
As a result, common consumers have been caught off guard by the suddenness of such supply shortage that triggered the prices of soybean and palm oil to go up exorbitantly. Not only that this essential commodity has been largely out of the retail markets for the past few days, stirring disappointment among the people.
What is behind the scarce of edible oil in the retail markets and who is to blame for this fiasco to rein in the prices of this daily necessary item?
There has been an old and proven cliché that syndicates are always behind creating an artificial crisis of a certain commodity to fleece the consumers. This time that kind of prediction has not been ruled out.
According to media report, some edible oil refineries have been involved in some irregularities. They have almost stopped refining the crude edible oil by shutting their refining units. Resultantly, there has been a little or no supply of this commodity to the markets.
Evidently, a five-member supervisory team of the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection has found the aforementioned irregularities after visiting a number of refineries in the country and recommended legal actions against them.
But there have been conflicting reports about market instability of edible oil. Local refiners for the last few months have been urging the government to raise the edible-oil prices in the wake of the substantial price spike in the international markets. Crude soybean oil prices in the international market were around $820-850 per tonne early this year, which rose to $1,225 per tonne in recent months, representing an increase of around 47 per cent.
This prompted the Bangladesh Vegetable Oil Refiners' and Vanaspati Manufacturers' Association to call on the Commerce Ministry on several occasions between June and November this year to match local soybean and palm oil prices with the global markets as our edible oil industry has been facing huge losses.
But edible oil refiners have claimed their request for price adjustments have fallen on deaf ears of the concerned authorities until now.
However, the government recently reduced VAT on the import, processing and trading of soybean and palm oil to lower their prices, responding to the demands of refiners and importers and the finance ministry announced VAT exemptions at the import and production stages.
Despite significant exemption of VAT between 10 to 15 percent in different stages, prices of edible oil have hiked conspicuously. For instance, a litre of Rupchanda soybean oil is now sold at Tk 167, two litres at Tk 334, and five litres at Tk 818.
We urge the government to ensure market availability of edible oil shortly as consumers are now running from pillar to post for this item, but to no avail.
