The government has sought information from the Bangladesh Bank about letters of credit (LCs) data of rice import, to know shipment details of the essential staple so that it can monitor and oversee supply situation in the market.
The Commerce Ministry has recently written to the central bank to obtain data of LCs opened by the private entities in every fortnight from 30 June.
Earlier, the Food Ministry requested the Commerce Ministry to collect the data and send it to the former.
Name and address of each importer, LC number and date, volume of import, importing country and date of shipment will have to be included in the data, according to the letter.
"We need the actual rice import data to know how much the staple food is in the pipeline for importing and how much has already been imported in the country so that we can properly monitor and oversee supply situation of the staple in the market," a commerce ministry official said.
The food ministry has allowed a good number of private traders to import and market rice in order to cool down its prices in the domestic market within August this year.
The government decided to import around 1 million tonnes of rice, aiming to tackle the artificial rice crisis - caused mostly by some unscrupulous traders and hoarders in the country, said a source in the commerce ministry.
Currently, the government has instructed the field-level administration to strengthen monitoring so that manipulators cannot create volatility in the rice market, he added.
LCs for 47,000 tonnes of rice have so far been opened in July.
Of them, 18,000 are settled, said Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Md Serajul Islam on July 19.
The Food Ministry has permitted over 386 importers to bring a total of around 990,000 tonnes within August amid a growing trend of rice prices in the domestic market.
