Why price hike cannot be restrained

The litany of complaints, accusations and protests against manipulative price hikes has been going on for years and decades without redress. A common complaint earlier was that the presence of business Mughals in parliament and the past regime's favouritism for quite a few highly notorious among them were responsible for the syndicated price escalation of commodities. The interim government has no such legacy nor is it dependent on the support of the dubious businesses concerned.

Then, why can it not take the bull by the horn? In the first few days of its taking over the reins, students started monitoring markets including the largest wholesale kitchen market in Dhaka with some success. Even the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection (DNCRP) enthused over the matter and expressed its desire to work together with students in order to keep the pressure on traders at the retail level. But missing from such drives are the big fish who are the main players in the fray.

There is still no sign of targeting the main architects of market manipulation. One example may suffice. Right now rice price in the international market has dropped significantly with India, the largest exporter allowing export and doing away with the higher rates of duty on it, but in Bangladesh the staple at the same time became pricier by Tk 3.0-7.0 a kilogram depending on its varieties. Equally mystifying is the reluctance of importers of rice to import it from abroad.

Another essential spice-cum-vegetable, onion again demonstrates the business jugglery traders have become accustomed to practising with venomous effect on the consumers. India relaxed the export duty on onion from 40 per cent to 20 per cent but the importers are importing it at a slow pace so that the artificially raised price at an atrocious level can be maintained or even engineered to a still higher level. This they could do without any resistance or interference. Currently, a kilogram of local variety of onion in the country is well above Tk 150 where in West Bengal it is priced at Tk 50 at the highest. 

There is hardly any good news from the market which seems to be on fire. The common consumers either have to restrain their pattern of consumption or at times completely forego intake of costly and nutritious foodstuffs. The least said about the low and fixed-income groups the better. How they are surviving is anybody's guess. Its short-term effect is already evident but the long-term one is sure to manifest in widespread child malnutrition leading to their stunted growth, endemic ill health, school dropouts and child marriage for girls. 

Consider yet another overlooked factor. Bangladesh does not import vegetables, in fact, it exports some. Then why should vegetables be so highly dear here? One ready answer is that transportation of those from the farm of the growing areas to markets all across the land is costly and cumbersome. This is a flimsy excuse. Now that the authorities have introduced trains for carrying vegetables from their growing areas to city markets, some positive impacts should have been there but for the accompanying mechanism.

Small farmers are used to taking their produce to local markets where the middlemen collect those from them and send to the designated landing spots from where those are put for auction sale for urban middlemen or retailers. The long established system has no alternative. A small farmer even does not know where in the city his produce will end up. This is why the move is not yielding any positive result.

Also, the railway network is limited to a few areas and the larger parts of the country remain beyond its coverage. How the rest of the country could be brought under such direct transportation of farm produce has time and again been suggested through this column and other columns in this newspaper. It is simple: let the BRTC form a pool of trucks entirely devoted to carrying vegetables and fruits from farms to city markets. All concerned ---farmers, consumers and the BRTC ---will benefit from such an arrangement. This is how the middlemen can be ousted from the process. Additionally, farmers can be given the trucks' ownership if an arrangement for payment in instalment is made over a reasonably long period.

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