Prices of essentials up again

Most people in the country have been taking the brunt of unrelenting food inflation for the last few years. The violence that gripped the capital city and beyond during the anti-quota movement saw fresh disruptions of supply chain for food and other essential commodities. This coupled with extended periods of curfew meant that the supplies of basic essentials that constitute the average person's daily diet got disrupted and prices have been on the uptick ever since. This is a phenomenon which appears to have become a mainstay for consumers in the country, but it hurts the most for common folk with less purchasing power.

The dual shock of unrest centring quota movement and curfew has been taking its toll on prices of daily essentials. And it is not only the capital city Dhaka that is bearing the brunt of this price onslaught, but other urban centres like Chattogram have seen similar conditions prevail currently. In Dhaka, it is not only an upsurge of prices of many basic items, but the supply of fish appears to have been severely affected. Previously, there was ample supply of everything, but prices were being artificially fixed by all the players in the supply chain. Now there is a backlog of various items that had been stuck up in supply chain. Whether or not the shortage of fish in the city's markets is a manmade shortage or something else needs to be looked into.

News reports have been awash with the sorry state of kitchen markets and wild prices. People having low incomes are living hand-to-mouth because the price spiral is beyond their reach. While traders are quick to point to disruption of supplies of vegetables, chicken and other essentials, public order has largely been restored with road link getting back to near normalcy. There is, obviously, supply disruption because of the imposition of curfew during certain hours of the day.

Authorities need to be very careful about people's perception about the State only being interested in infrastructure development and not being mindful enough of people's basic needs. The right to food is a fundamental right that needs greater policy consideration, especially in today's political climate. The country has just been through hell over the violence that had gripped the capital city and beyond and while there is a blame game going on who did what, people will still need to eat. They need access to food at prices they can afford. The fact that traders appear to be above the law and are at liberty to raise prices per kilo of any item ranging from Tk 1.0 to Tk 5.0 on a daily basis defies all the laws of economics - unless of course such price fixing is being done at all stages of the supply chain. These matters have been thoroughly exposed over the last few years through several government-initiated surveys and yet nothing appears to change on the ground.

There is ample evidence that traders have been found guilty of artificially creating crisis upon crisis in markets by holding back supplies by way of warehousing perishables like eggs, onion, etc. to create the conditions whereby they may continue to charge astronomical prices for food items. Now that there has been real political agitation that have actually disrupted the supply chain for more than a week, it leaves little to imagination why certain items' supply appear to have vanished into thin air; while prices of items like chili had reached at one point, Tk800 per kilogram! Something needs to change about how wholesale markets operate in this country before another round of protests hit the country - this time over food inflation.