The Food Ministry has again extended time for businesses to open letters of credit (LCs) for importing rice as shipments are very low, while prices continue to rise from the recent spike in fuel costs.
Importers who got permission from the ministry to import rice will be able to open LCs until August 29 this year, according to a notice last week.
The previous deadline for opening LCs would have expired on Sunday.
The announcement comes as the appetite for starting import procedures remains low among permit winners for the soaring cost of US dollars, which reduces their prospect for profit.
Private and public agencies opened LCs to import nearly 129,000 tonnes of rice since July this fiscal year.
However, only 26,850 tonnes of the grain have entered Bangladesh between July 1 and August 14 even though the government gave permission to private firms to import nearly 1 million tonnes and market it before the harvest of the aman crop in the November-December period.
This is the reason for the Food Ministry extending the deadline by a month until September 29.
Food Secretary Md Ismiel Hossain said private firms were initially not too interested in importing rice but the situation has since changed after petroleum prices went up in the local market.
To encourage imports to contain prices of rice, which poor and low-income people already spend most of their income on, the Food Ministry also urged the government to provide full or partial removal of import duty and taxes on the grain.
An official of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) said they are examining a proposal for lifting the 15% regulatory duty on rice.
On June 23 this year, the customs authority reduced the import tariff on rice to 25% from 62.5% to encourage imports and increase supply so that local prices cool off.
Importers with permission from the food ministry will be able to import rice by paying the duty until October 31 this year.
On Wednesday, people in Dhaka city had to pay up to Tk80 per kg of fine rice, up 7% from Tk75 a month ago, according to market prices data compiled by the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB).
People were also paying as much as Tk54 to get a kg of coarse grains, which was up 4% from a month ago, TCB data also showed.