Potato prices still remained much higher on Sunday than the government-fixed maximum retail price of Tk 30 a kg.
Diamond (BARI Alu 7) and cardinal varieties of stored potato were selling at Tk 43-50 a kg while 'carriage' variety at Tk 50-55 a kg on Sunday in the city retail markets.
The state-owned Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) will begin its Open Market Sale (OMS) of potato at Tk 25 a kg soon, commerce minister Tipu Munshi announced at a meeting on Sunday.
The meeting was held at the secretariat with potato traders, cold storage owners and concerned government agencies, organised by the commerce ministry amid soaring prices of potato in the recent days.
The commerce minister said that there is no shortage of potato in the country for now and the traders must follow the government-fixed maximum prices of potato.
He said maximum retail prices will be brought down to Tk 30 a kg soon through strict market monitoring.
However, prices of potato declined by only Tk 5.0 a kg both at wholesale and retail markets since October 14, but still much higher than the government rates.
The Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) on October 14 fixed the maximum cold-storage, wholesale and retail prices of potato as Tk 23, Tk 25 and Tk 30 a kg respectively after calculating all costs.
The DAM decision came as prices of potato shot up by 25 per cent in a week to Tk 50-55 a kg.
The current price is 90-100 per cent higher than that of a year ago, according to DAM.
Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) secretary Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan said that there is a lack of coordination between agriculture ministry and the commerce ministry regarding the markets and cold-storages inspection.
He said it is now the fifth day that the DAM under the agriculture ministry fixed the prices of potato, but we didn't find any effective market vigilance both by the DAM and agencies under the commerce ministry.
The concerned agencies under the two ministries should start market drives in a large scale soon to bring down prices of potato, he added.
A DAM notification, published in its website on October 14, said the potato price was maximum Tk 14 a kg when it was stored in February-April period.
Adding cold storage charge of TK 3.66, weight loss Tk 0.88, selection cost of Tk 0.46 and interest and other costs of Tk 2.0, the cold storage price of per kg potato is maximum Tk 21 a kg.
DAM said the country's potato production was 10.9 million tonnes against 7.7 million tonnes of demand, so there is no shortage.
According to Bangladesh Cold Storage Association (BCSA), above 369 cold storages stored 4.0 million tonnes of potato this year of which 1.5 million tonnes are seed potato.
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