Importers, wholesalers and traders have assured the government of their cooperation in keeping prices of essentials at a tolerable level during the month of Ramadan.
Their assurance of cooperation came at a meeting with the commerce adviser Sunday in the city.
Commerce adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman, emerging from the meeting, said they have discussed demand and supply situation of essential commodities and monitoring of the market. The business community assured the government of its effort to keep prices of essentials at reasonable level.
He did not explain about the way of market monitoring by the law-enforcers in details but said this will be in a systematic manner.
The commerce adviser held the meeting with the businessmen after the government decided to deploy law enforcers to watch the market and the price movement.
"We want to impress upon the traders about the necessity of maintaining the commodity market, from wholesale to retail level, steady," commerce adviser said.
Answering a question, he said: "We will take action if there is any specific allegation against a trader on hoarding or price manipulation. We will not act on the basis of idea or rumour."
In line with the suggestions in the meeting, commerce adviser said: "We have decided to sit separately with leading trade bodies, city corporations and traders of particular commodities again."
He said the government will take measures to run fair price shops to help the low income group buy consumer goods at reasonable prices during Ramadan month.
"We will sit with the authorities of the city corporations and leading trade bodies like FBCCI and BGMEA and request them to open fair-price shops at their own initiatives."
Dr. Zillur said university students and members of Ansar can be engaged for running such fair-price shops.
He said the government will request the US government to provide Bangladesh edible oil as food assistance.
"We will propose the External Resources Division (ERD) to request the US government to provide us edible oil as we have come to know that the country has huge stock of the commodity," he said.
He further said: "We have decided to look for alternative sources like Myanmar and China to import onion and gram."
Dr. Zillur said they will hold a meeting with the officials of the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh as the state agency has been assigned to sell 3000 tonnes of edible oil, 3000 tonnes of lentil, 500 tonnes of gram and onion each in Ramadan.
He said the TCB will open a tender on July 29 for buying 2,500 tonnes of edible oil.
In case of poor response, he said, the government will consider going for spot purchase of the consumer item from local or international market.
Commerce adviser said the meeting observed that there were sufficient stocks of consumer goods, including rice, wheat and lentil, in the country.
Import of rice, wheat, edible oil, lentil, sugar, onion and powder milk in the past one year until July 10 marked 391.13 per cent, 49.79 per cent, 71.99 per cent, 25.61 per cent, 41.28 per cent, 114.79, 33.66 per cent rise respectively over that in the same period of the last year, according to the statistics of the central bank.
Dr. Zillur said they have decided to form a committee to suggest ways for easier and speedy import of perishable commodities through land ports following an appeal by traders.
He said the commerce ministry will request the Ministry of Agriculture for measures to boost production of some vegetable items like cucumber, eggplant, green chili during the Ramadan.
