Monitoring essentials market

Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) says the inflation rate has been showing a falling trend over the last two months (August-September) and that the decline in the prices of food and non-food items bears testimony to that. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures the changes over time in the prices of a set of representative consumer items (goods and services), has been around 10 per cent since March last year. Meanwhile, central bank has raised interest rates several times to make money costlier for borrowers in a bid to rein in the inflation rate. The CPI, according to BBS, came down from 10.49 in August to 9.92 per cent in September which is a fall by 0.57 percentage points. But that is on paper. What are the actual prices of essential commodities in the kitchen market? The farm-produced brown eggs for instance, are selling between Tk.170 and Tk.175 per dozen at the larger kitchen markets which at the groceries of mahallas (neighbourhoods) would sell at higher prices. That means each piece of egg is priced at around Tk.15 or more. A cheaper source of protein for the low-income group of people has thus gone far beyond their reach. Other varieties of farm-produced eggs, say, the white ones, too, are similarly priced at the kitchen markets and at local groceries. Over the week, the price of broiler chicken, too, has gone up by Tk.10 to Tk.20 per kg reaching between TK.200 to Tk.2010 per kg. The so-called Sonali (golden) chicken, on the other hand, is selling between Tk.260 and Tk. 280 per kg. The price hike of green vegetables has perhaps crossed all limits. Price of green chilli, as always, has gone through the roof within a week from Tk.180-Tk.200 per kg to Tk.500 per kg on Saturday (October 5) followed by a fall to Tk.400/kg the next day. Why? It is the week-long rain, the greengrocers would be quick to explain. Prices of other green vegetables, too, have been soaring.

Despite this continuing volatility of the kitchen market, the BBS would have us believe that the CPI is on a falling curve. When the essential commodity market is behaving irrationally, the commerce ministry officials during their market monitoring drives are learnt to have fined seven traders of essential commodities at the kitchen markets of New Market and Gulshan on Sunday (October 6). The charge against the trader who was reportedly fined Tk.2000 at the New Market's poultry market was that he failed to display the price list. The question is, do the traders whether selling chicken, fish or vegetables ever go by price charts even if they put those on display in their shops? They were never found lacking in excuses for failing to adhere to the prices fixed by the government. The New Market's poultry traders' main fault was perhaps the exorbitant prices he might have been asking for chickens and not his failure to display price chart. The drive to monitor market and prices of commodities by the commerce ministry or any other concerned government body including the directorate of national consumer rights protection (DNCRP) has no record of having ever produced expected results. Operators of the essential commodities market are beyond the control of governments in the past and present. The allegation that the so-called traders' syndicates are behind price manipulations of essential commodities seems too simplistic. True, big wholesalers of essential commodities have close link with one another. But that is an essential part of keeping the market operators informed of the demand and supply of essential commodities in the market on a day-to-day basis. However, that does not mean that there is no foul play by the big wholesalers. The government should strengthen its market intelligence network, if it has any, to home in on at the exact moment whenever any such plot to manipulate prices is reported. Otherwise, the entire market and price monitoring exercise may prove to be a barren one.

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