A day after the government fixed prices for 29 essential items, it found a significant discrepancy between the prices that the government had set and the actual prices at which the commodities are selling in the markets.
On Friday, the government’s Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) set prices for 29 essential products, including onions, potatoes, eggplants, broiler chicken, mutton, and beef at wholesale and retail levels.
The directive, effective immediately, came through the issuance of a notification signed by DAM Director General Masud Karim, apparently to the relief of general consumers who have been paying exorbitant prices for essentials since the beginning of the Muslim fasting month.
But on Saturday, another state-run agency, the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB), found that the essentials are being sold in the markets nowhere near the prices set by the government.
TCB keeps daily tabs on essential prices in the markets.
For example, on Friday, DAM fixed the onion price at Tk65.40 per kilogram, stating that it is the reasonable highest retail price of onions now. The following day's market monitoring report from TCB found onions being traded at retail levels as high as Tk80-85 per kg.
According to DAM’s fixed price, potatoes should be sold at Tk28.55 per kg, but TCB found the tuber crop being traded at retail levels of Tk35 to Tk40 per kg. DAM considered it fair to sell eggplants at a retail level of Tk49.75 per kg, but in reality, TCB found the vegetable, which is heavily consumed during Ramadan, being traded at Tk80 to Tk90 per kg.
DAM decided that the general quality dates should not be priced at more than around Tk185 per kg, but TCB finds that buyers have to pay at least Tk280 to purchase even the lowest grade of dates available in the market.
While fixing the maximum retail prices of 29 essential items on Friday, DAM noted that producers’ selling prices were much cheaper, and even after making good profits at wholesale and retail levels, traders could offer consumers much more reasonable prices than what they are offering now.
For example, DAM found farmers’ selling price of onions at Tk44 per kg, as against a production cost of Tk34 only. Then it fixed the wholesale and retail prices of onions at Tk53 and Tk65 respectively, but in reality, consumers have to pay much more than that to buy onions.
DAM sent out its instructions regarding the prices of essentials it had set to all district and police administrations, city corporations, and the consumers’ rights directorate for proper actions. However, consumers find no impact in the market.
Md Kamruzzaman, a deputy director of DAM, told Dhaka Tribune that as per a 2018 farm product marketing law, the Department of Agricultural Marketing is mandated to monitor and ensure fair prices of essentials in the market.
"But we don't have the resources to implement it. We hardly have two or three people in each of the districts. So we expect cooperation from other agencies in implementing fair prices."
Referring to Friday’s DAM initiative regarding the prices of 29 essential items, Kamruzzaman said the department has sought the assistance of the consumers' rights directorate, city corporations, and executive magistrates for proper implementation and market monitoring.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official of the Directorate of National Consumers Rights Protection (DNCRP) told Dhaka Tribune that they're trying their best to conduct market drives regularly so that consumers aren’t cheated. However, he said DNCRP has resource constraints too.
Consumers expressed resentment at such ad hoc measures like fixing just prices of products by the government, making those prices public through announcements, and then seeing no impact in reality.
M Asaduzzaman, a former research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), said such price fixing by government agencies would not ease life for consumers and suggested taking proper action against the rampant illegal toll taken from the entire agricultural value chain.
