Agriculture Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque on Wednesday said the government was active towards ensuring fair prices for potato farmers, as such they increased retail potato prices from Tk30 to Tk35 per kilogram, but the middlemen and intermediaries were taking advantage of this.
He made the remarks during a question-answer session at a webinar titled "The Role of Agriculture in Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) in Bangladesh", organized by the Agriculture Reporters Forum (ARF).
He also said that the cold storage owners should act more responsibly towards the consumers and the market mechanism.
The minister said that as the government looked after marginal farmers' interest, they increased the potato prices in retail from Tk30 to Tk35 per kilogram.
Hence, the cold storage owners must be more responsible and not charge more than what the government had fixed, he added.
The minister also said that for an agrarian country like Bangladesh, there is no alternative to development of the agricultural sector to achieve the SDGs.
Zuena Aziz, chief coordinator (SDG Affairs) of the prime minister's office, said that revolutionary changes had taken place in the local agricultural sector.
While it was impossible to ensure food security for 70 million people after our independence, it is now possible to ensure food security for 170 million people, she added.
Meanwhile, in another program at the Secretariat, Abdur Razzaque said that the kitchen market monitoring will be further strengthened from Thursday to check whether traders were selling potatoes at the re-fixed price of Tk35 set by the government.
Since the beginning of October, potato prices began to skyrocket, reaching Tk 55-60 per kg in retail.
The Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) on October 14 had fixed the potato prices at Tk30 per kg in retail, but the traders did not follow that. Potatoes were found retailing for Tk 41-42 per kg in the wholesale market.
Retail traders expressed their outrage over the stoppage of potato sales at Karwan Bazar wholesale kitchen market in the capital since Monday.
However, wholesalers blamed this on cold storage owners, who refused to sell potatoes to the former at prices set by the government.
