The government has decided to purchase rice bran oil at Tk161 per litre, which is Tk4.85 cheaper than the price set for soybean oil. A total of 1.10 crore litres of rice bran oil will be bought at subsidized rates, alongside 2.20 crore litres of soybean oil, which has been priced at Tk165.85 per litre.
This approval was given during a meeting of the Advisers Council Committee on Government Purchase (ACCGP), held in the conference room of the Cabinet Division at the secretariat on Thursday. The meeting was presided over by Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed.
The purchase was approved in response to a proposal from the Ministry of Commerce aimed at supplying subsidized oil to Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) family card-holders.
The soybean oil purchase will cost Tk364.87 crore in total, while the rice bran oil will cost Tk177.10 crore.
According to meeting sources, an internal open tender was floated for the procurement of 1.10 crore litres of refined rice bran oil for distribution among one crore TCB family card-holding households.
Three bids were submitted, all of which were deemed financially and technically responsive.
Following evaluation and recommendations from the Technical Evaluation Committee (TEC), the Ministry of Commerce decided to purchase 20,000 litres of oil from Tamim Agro Industries in Dhaka and 90,000 litres from Mazumder Bran Oil Mills Limited in Jessore.
Additionally, the committee approved another proposal from the Commerce Ministry to purchase 2.20 crore litres of soybean oil for the 2024–25 fiscal year through a local open tender process.
For the soybean oil procurement, three bids were also submitted, of which two were found to be financially and technically compliant. Based on the TEC’s recommendation, the lowest responsive bidder, Sonargaon Seeds Crushing Mills, was selected to supply the soybean oil.
