The government is considering a set of measurers, including putting a cap on rice stocks by farmers, hoarders and millers to help fulfil its Boro procurement target, officials said.
It might also go for a strict monitoring through the law enforcing agencies and formulating specific policies in a bid to prevent the rice millers/traders from creating any artificial crisis in the market through hoarding of rice.
Taking the current slow progress in the Boro rice procurement drive into consideration, the authorities is also considering holding of meetings with rice millers and farmers to make the foodgrain purchase drive a success, they said.
The Department of Food has already made the aforesaid recommendations to higher authorities following slow progress in the current Boro procurement drive due to a poor response from both the framers and rice millers, an official source said.
"The procurement of foodgrain in the current Boro season is still lagging behind the target despite taking necessary steps at the government and private levels," said an official source.
The government has set the targets of procuring 1.2 million tonnes of rice and 0.3 million tonnes of paddy for the current Boro season and the purchase drive is to continue until August 31, 2008.
But the Department of Food collected only 60,608 tonnes of rice and 15,829 tonnes of paddy at the end of May, an official mentioned, expressing dissatisfaction over the current procurement performance.
However, the authorities have identified the mismatch between the prices fixed for official procurement drive and those prevailing in the open market as the main reason for the poor collection of Boro rice.
The government has raised this year the procurement price of rice by 55 per cent to Tk 28 a kilogram (kg) from the last year's price, taking the prevailing prices of rice into consideration.
The price of Boro paddy has also been increased to Tk 18 per kg from the last year's price of nearly 11 per kg in a bid to help achieve the government's procurement target.
But prices of both rice and paddy in the open markets are higher than those fixed for official procurement.
The prices of different coarse and finer varieties of rice in the country now range between Tk 32 and Tk 38 per kg, market sources said, adding that there is little possibility of rice prices falling in the weeks ahead.
Against this backdrop, both the farmers and rice millers are reluctant to sell rice and paddy to the government, officials said.
Besides, a section of rice millers and wholesale traders are learnt to have started hoarding rice, hoping that the rice prices would go up further in the market.
Officials and experts, however, observed that any setback in the official Boro procurement drive would deal a blow to the government's plan for building a 3.0-million tonnes of foodgrains stock for the next fiscal year.
"If the government fails to make a buffer stock of foodgrains, it would face a difficult situation to maintain its overall food operations in the next season," said an official.
