PRICES keep increasing or continue to remain high after marking up for weeks, further burdening people, especially the poor and low- and fixed-income groups. The situation appears to be constraining the living, exposing the national health and nutritional status to risks and leaving the poverty status to slide further down. All this appears so because the government steps to mitigate the sufferings of the groups of people, effected by increased prices, are reported not to have worked very well. Beef prices increased to Tk 700 a kilogram, up by about Tk 30, before Shab-e-Barat, which fell on the night of March 18, and continued to remain high. And the traders put down the reason for the price increase to increase in prices of all items on the market. Broiler prices increased to Tk 160–165 a kilogram; the local Sonali variety sold for tk 270–280 a kilogram and free-range chickens sold for Tk 500–550 a kilgoram. Mutton sold for Tk 850–890 a kilogram. With prices of fish and red lentil having remained high, the situation stands to harm protein intake for ordinary people.

The commerce ministry reduced the price of edible oils — by Tk 10 in the case of packed soya bean oil on March 20 and by Tk 3 in the case of unpacked soya bean oil on March 22 — after the government had withdrawn value-added tax on the import of edible oil import, but the reduction has hardly left any mark on edible oil prices on the market. This again speaks of the perennial problem of the agencies responsible to enforce prices and create competition on the market. Prices of different varieties of rice have also remained high over the week. In such a situation, the government, which appears to be rather unwilling to contain the price spiral, has started reaching essential goods for subsidised prices to 10 million people, the poor and low-income people, through Trading Corporation’s special open market sales scheme in bulk twice, before Ramadan and during Ramadan. While the scheme has already earned some bad names because of hoarding by the people involved in the distribution and the manipulation in the distribution of family cards, it has already appeared untenable, as media reports suggest, for the poor as most of them do not have the money to buy the goods in bulk, which they need to pay for at once. A seemingly good initiative of the government to help people in economic hardship appears to go awry as the intended beneficiaries do not have even the money they need to pay to buy goods at subsidised prices. The situation also suggests that there have been problems with the government’s poverty reduction schemes.

While the government must contain the goods price spiral to afford the poor, and low- and fixed-income people a serviceable living, all this warrants that the government should rework its social safety net programmes and poverty reduction schemes to make them meaningful.