Market dynamics in Bangladesh are stranger than fiction. Whereas in most countries, demand and supply dictate what prices of goods will be, that universal law does not apply in Bangladesh, at least when it comes to fixing the price of essential items. This trend was more pronounced over the last one year in the retail markets for food items. After a series of debacles involving price of eggs, edible oil, rice, potato grown more than the demand has shot up to unheard of heights.
Indeed, according to reports published in media, price of potato (per kg) has surpassed 200 per cent in a year. This is very interesting because this year, despite several natural calamities like flood, there has been a bumper crop of potatoes. Those potatoes have reached the markets around the country and yet we are witnessing a strange spectacle of potato trading at more thanTk60/kg, which is actually higher than the price of coarse rice (consumed by the masses)! No one can explain this situation because over the past few decades, whenever new potatoes hit the market, prices used to drop because supply outstripped demand. This year is no exception and there are more potatoes than needed and yet the price of potato shows no sign of relenting.
Reporters have been scouring the main kitchen markets around the city and the feedback is that price per kg of potato vary by as much as Tk10 per kilo in different markets. The price per kg of potato has jumped by around Tk10 in a week's span. Why? New potatoes hit the markets in mid-December and the market for potatoes should have calmed down and not heated up at this time. Surprisingly, the price of coarse rise has declined to stand between Tk50 to Tk55 per kg. So, consumers are being taught a new version of basic economics where the law of demand-and-supply is invalid and market forces also do not decide price of a commodity depending on its availability or scarcity.
In the past, consumers were fed the usual litany of excuses that included the dearth of dollars and the devaluation of Taka or the Russo-Ukrainian war were all responsible for disruption of market. There is no question of any shortage of supply of potato, so the usual blame game is not working this time around. It is interesting to see that no State agency has actually intervened in any sustained and concrete manner to calm down the prices of essentials in 2023. The usual knee-jerk response to the explosion in prices by leaps-and-bounds on every conceivable foodstuff has left economists at a loss and consumers having to tighten their belts further and further until they ran out of holes on their belts.
The fat on the price of every commodity is being skimmed off by players along the entire supply chain where farmers are denied a fair price for their produce and consumers are made to pay through their noses. This comes at a time with less than a week before the general elections and by the looks of it, consumers have been left high-and-dry once again. It is a national tragedy that people apparently have no one to look after their very meagre demands. One can only hope that the post-election authorities will turn their attention to the plight of the people and do something to bring back a modicum of order in the pattern of fixing food prices in this country.
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