OMS sale of flour in city to be increased
October 08, 2011 00:00:00
FE Report
The government has decided to raise sale of flour (atta) to at least 500 kilogrammes through each of the open market sales (OMS) trucks in the Dhaka city from now on in a bid to control rice and flour price, said a food ministry release Friday.
Food Minister Abdur Razzaque has also ordered increasing the quantity of rice as per the need of the district towns and decided to strengthen the open market sales of rice and atta programme in future.
The minister made the directives as the chair of a review meeting on the OMS programme held at the food directorate.
There are 200 trucks in the capital selling rice and atta while the total number of dealers is 922 in the country through whom the OMS programme is being run, the meeting was informed.
Outside Dhaka, in every district towns at least 10 to 12 tonnes of atta are being sold through OMS. Mr Razzaque ordered increasing the quantity to 20 tonnes from the present 15 tonnes as per the requirement of the districts.
Rice is being sold at Tk 24 per kg and atta at Tk 20 through OMS programme. Instructions are being given to the vigilance teams to strictly monitor the sales activities. Also decision was taken to oversee the sales activities by both the ministry and the directorate teams.
The government has a stock of 1.25 million tonnes of rice and 0.23 million tonnes of atta at its godowns. It was also disclosed in the meeting that some 0.35 million tonnes of rice of and 0.28 millions tonnes of wheat were in pipeline to be added to its stock. Both rice and wheat will be collected from local and importer sources.
About 0.14 million tonnes of wheat have been imported through private channels over the last three months, the meeting was told.
Additional Secretary of the food ministry Abdul Awal Hawlader, Director General (DG) of the food directorate Ahmad Hossain Khan, Additional DG Enayet Hossain, Joint Secretary of the ministry Khandaker Atiar Rahman, directors of the directorate and field level officers were present in the meeting.
