The authorities are harping on the same tune for quite some time: if price of onion does not come down, arrangement will be made for import of this essential item. Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi tried to be a little more precise on Friday last when he stated that if price of the item does not drop within a day or two, onion will once again be imported from India. This is rather strange. Who does not feel that the prices of not only of this tuber-cum-spice-cum-vegetable on high demand before the Eid-ul-Adha have been intriguingly manipulated by business syndicates? They are the last actors to bring down the prices of all such items on their own ahead of the second most religious festival in the country.
Already the price hike of onion has been almost two and a half times more compared to the time of Eid-ul-Fitr. When will the process of onion import get going? Isn't Tk 90 a kilogram of onion unreasonable enough for initiating some administrative measures either to contain the price or import the item? In the first place, there is no plausible reason for any increase in onion price. Bangladesh had record yield of onion at more than 3.4 million tonnes and the present stock is more than 1.8 million tonnes. Price slump immediately after harvest disappointed farmers as losses stared in their faces. Then what has happened by this time that the price will continue to soar unbridled? If the trend continues, soon it will cross the Tk 100 mark for a kilogram of onion. The happenings in the intervening period are nothing but intrigues by business syndicates.
Quite clearly, once the growers have disposed of their produce at a very low price, the middlemen and trade syndicates started to take over. They built up their stocks in order to control the supply line and push up the price at will. In a record harvest year, this would have been impossible if the Directorate of National Consumer Rights Protection and the Ministry of Commerce monitored and intervened to bust the syndicate. The decision not to import onion from India which also had a bumper harvest has not protected the interests of farmers, rather it has given the handle to stockists and traders to play foul with the market forces. When price of onion was raised by Tk10-20 within a week, the authorities should have intervened to see where things had gone wrong. Instead, the litany of 'will import onion if price does not fall' (as if it will do so automatically!) has been going on endlessly.
It appears, the business syndicates could not care less. The reason is quite obvious. When an overwhelming majority of businesspeople find their places in parliament, no minister can carry out popular agenda counter to the interests of the group of lawmakers. In India a kilogram of onion is priced at Rs 30-35 and had it been imported earlier, the trade syndicate could not take the consumers for a ride like this. It takes sometime to complete official procedures before import can be started. By the time it will be done, if the decision is at all taken in favour of import, the onion syndicate will have made an unearned income of billions of taka.
Significantly before the Eid-ul Adha, other spices have also recorded price hikes twice as much. Zinger priced at Tk 180 before Eid-ul-Fitr, is now selling at Tk 300 at the lowest and, according to report, the imported Chinese variety at Tk 400 a kilo. Cumin seed has become dearer by Tk 300 a kilo within a week to register record prices at Tk 800-900 depending on their qualities. If this is not ploys of business syndicates at full play, what is it? This explains why some people are making too much money at the cost of the general public, the middle class and the low-income segments of which are now writhing under the artificially triggered oppressive market volatility.
nilratanhalder2000@yahoo.com