Shawdesh Desk:

An inter-ministerial meeting on Sunday decided to enhance market vigilance over supply chains of daily essentials as well as intermediaries to check commodity price hikes.

Economists, however, noted that such decisions were taken on a number of occasions in the past to combat price manipulators and market destabilisers without any success.

The price of staple food rice remained high in the post-harvest amon season this year, as did the price of vegetables and spices such as potato and onion.

The prices of beef, eggs, and chicken are also on the rise with the start of the new year.

‘Success of decisions depends on their implementation,’ said Centre for Policy Dialogue distinguished fellow Mustafizur Rahman while commenting on the meeting held to take stock of the overall market situation ahead of Ramadan.

Sadly, the people of the country did not see any effective implementation of market monitoring decisions over the past one and a half years, he said.

He said that it would be very good to see if the latest decision was implemented meaningfully.

The meeting, presided over by finance minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali, at the secretariat found no shortage of essential items, especially those consumed during Ramadan.

Attending the meeting, agriculture minister Md Abdus Shahid, food minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder, fisheries and livestock minister Md Abdur Rahman, and state minister for commerce Ahasanul Islam found that unscrupulous businesses and market intermediaries were responsible for the market upheaval quite often.

If needed, stern action will be taken against them, said the finance minister after the meeting convened against the backdrop of average monthly inflation hovering around 9.5 per cent in the first five months of the current financial year.

While presiding over the first meeting of her new cabinet on January 15, prime minister Sheikh Hasina directed the authorities concerned to take immediate measures to contain rising prices of essential commodities.

In FY23, the average inflation was calculated at 9.02 per cent, the highest in more than a decade, which was tormenting the majority of people amid less increase in wage rate.

Fisheries and livestock minister Abdur Rahman said that they would take tough measures against market manipulators and destabilisers to uphold government commitments.

The meeting was seen as the first step at the beginning of the fourth straight  term of the present political regime, which gave checking price hikes top priority in its election manifesto.

Rahman said that they were in the process of identifying price manipulators but insisted that it would take time.

He underscored the importance of separating the manipulators from the suspects for the welfare of the market, run in a free market economy.

The fisheries and livestock minister hoped that they would be able to check the price hike for essentials soon.

Consumers Association of Bangladesh vice president SM Nazer Hossain said that political will was imperative to stabilise the market.

He said that it was a good sign that several ministers sat together to assess the situation at the beginning of the new government.

Bangladesh Bank governor Abdur Rauf Talukder, who was also present at the meeting, dismissed any shortage of dollars to foot the import bills of essential food items.

He said that the opening of LCs for importing eight essential commodities ahead of Ramadan was 10 to 15 per cent higher compared to imports made in the past year.

There will be no shortage of those items in the country, he said, while commenting on allegations made by businesses about the dollar shortage affecting the import of essentials.