With a day remaining before Bangladesh votes, the price of daily essentials has become more than an economic statistic. It is a public mood indicator.
When families see rice, edible oil, onions, lentils, and vegetables shift sharply within the same week, they don’t read it as “normal market fluctuation.” It can be read as a risk -- of shortage, of manipulation, of being left behind.
Bangladesh entered this election window with inflation already high enough to make households extremely sensitive. Official figures from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics put point-to-point inflation at 8.49% in December 2025, with food inflation at 7.71%. When the baseline is this elevated, even small shocks feel like emergencies.
It’s important to be precise. This is not a claim that “elections cause inflation.” Structural inflation has deeper drivers: Import costs, exchange-rate pressures, supply bottlenecks, weak competition, and governance gaps in commodity markets.
The Centre for Policy Dialogue has argued that domestic structural and market-management problems help keep inflation stubborn (CPD analysis). But the final days before this election are about something narrower and faster-moving: Volatility driven by uncertainty.
That volatility usually comes through three channels:
First, expectation-driven behaviour: When people expect disruption, they stock up. A household that usually buys rice for three days buys for 10 “just in case.” Multiply that across neighbourhoods and demand spikes without any real change in supply.
Traders, seeing demand rising, either raise prices to ration limited stock or simply exploit the moment. Panic-buying is individually rational in an uncertain week, but collectively it becomes a price engine.
Second, a short burst of local spending: Campaign activity, such as transport, banners, food, and temporary hiring, pushes cash into local markets.
Even if that spending is ordinary, it can still increase short-run demand for staples and services in the final stretch. When supply is already tight, extra demand shows up as higher prices rather than higher quantities.
Third, weak market discipline: Sensitive periods create opportunities. If monitoring looks distracted, hoarding and coordinated pricing become tempting. And once a few sellers test higher prices successfully, the increase becomes the new reference price for others, even for sellers who never planned to raise prices.
The government cannot “solve inflation” now. The goal is to contain uncertainty and anchor expectations so it does not become a self-fulfilling inflation shock.
The strongest lever in this narrow window is the visible supply. Bangladesh already uses open market sale (OMS) programs; what matters now is whether they are large and predictable enough to shape market psychology.
OMS calms markets when timings and locations are clear, stock availability is publicly posted, and replenishment is fast where queues form. If OMS is unpredictable or runs out instantly, it can backfire by signalling scarcity.
The next lever is targeted enforcement with real deterrence value. Enforcement should not be random raids on small retailers; that breeds resentment and doesn’t change price-setting upstream.
The focus should be on wholesale bottlenecks and abnormal stock patterns: Unusual storage, repeated refusal to sell, sudden coordinated price jumps across linked markets, and evidence of collusion.
When enforcement is predictable and evidence-based, it discourages manipulation without turning regulation into harassment.
Protecting the most exposed through subsidized channels that will reduce panic is also a necessity. TCB truck sales matter not only because they lower prices for some households, but because they reassure everyone that there is a fallback. The state’s job is simple: Keep these channels uninterrupted and predictable, so queues do not turn into rumours.
Also, the liquidity should be kept from turning into a demand shock. Coordination with Bangladesh Bank should aim to avoid unnecessary cash surges that inflate short-run demand.
Finally, the government must speak with one voice -- communication is an economic instrument. Mixed messages, silence, or last-minute surprises do the opposite.
Price stability during election week is ultimately about dignity. It is about whether a family can enter the bazaar without feeling punished for living through a tense national moment.
Shaikh Afnan Birahim is a Bangladeshi writer and analyst and a postgraduate student at the University of Glasgow. Views expressed are the writer’s own.