Kitchen market growing jittery once again

Kitchen market serves as the pulse of microeconomics in a country. Prices, however affordable or not, depend on supply of essentials due to seasonal variations. Winter is the time when there is a surfeit of vegetables in market and naturally prices fall. But Bangladesh is a country that often defies demand-supply theory. As is the case right now, winter vegetables are still flooding the kitchen market but suddenly prices of these essentials have shot up this week. Compared to the past week, different kinds of vegetables are selling at prices higher by Tk 10-20 a kilogram or a piece. 

There is nothing to be surprised if this has a connection with the making of the pay package for government officers and employees public. Although the proposed higher pay scale recommended has no chance of getting implemented during the tenure of the interim government, who cares? The implementation or rejection of this pay package solely depends on the discretion of the next elected government. Even if the elected government agrees to raise salaries of government employees, it may not approve the raise at the rates suggested in the pay commission's report. Because involved here is more than Tk1.0 trillion. Where will the money come from? 

The problem here is that those in business and trade need a slight hint of anything propitious for driving commodities' price escalation. Or, there is no logic behind this sudden market volatility. Again, hiking price this time may be a trial run before the Ramadan that is knocking at the door. No one claims that production at the field is poor or there is any supply disruption and yet this sudden increase in prices has been fuelled irrationally. If vegetables are dear at this time, collusion and machination behind the latest price hike cannot be ruled out. 

The prices of all kinds of chicken have also followed suit. If price of broiler chicken has gone up by Tk 10-20, Sonali and other varieties have registered prices higher by Tk20-30. The rice market once again became jittery a week ago ---and this happened from time to time ---when each kilogram became dearer by Tk2.0-5.0. Before inflation could ease a little, the combined impact of the staple, vegetables and chicken has indicated that it is stubborn enough not to provide the common people with some relief.

What is particularly depressing is that the whole episode is the result of an orchestration by devious and avaricious middlemen and wholesalers. Farmers who produce vegetables and manage poultry and fish farms hardly get benefit from such price escalations. Exchange of hands several times ---not fewer than four to five ---is yet another reason for addition of costs at each point. The margin of profit gets dissipated because of such addition of cost at each step. 

So there is a clear case of rooting out the various exchange points in between producers and consumers. No government has tried to help farmers with the problem of transportation of their produce from farms to urban centres where consumers have to pay many times more than the prices at the farm level. 

This can be done easily if the government uses a large pool of trucks and goods wagons of the railway for carrying goods to distant markets. Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) trucks can be used for the purpose and similarly one freight wagon should be added to every passenger train for transportation of perishable agricultural produce. The transportation cost will be minimal if the facility of using the freight wagon is reserved for farm produce or other daily essentials. The BRTC can earn money from such a venture and the railway also can take a share in the transportation charge. Apart from curtailing the intermediary elements, goods transportation can avoid paying illegal tolls at several points. 

To check market inflation, such a strategy can be highly useful. During the Covid 19 epidemic, such a market was arranged with trucks directly bringing vegetables there from farms. That initiative can be expanded and made a permanent system to make the social parasites like notorious middlemen and illegal toll collectors in between redundant. This way inflation can be tamed to a large extent.

nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com