Fish prices mark fall in Rajshahi markets

RAJSHAHI, Sept 06: Though the prices of all sorts of fish marked a fall in the markets of the district over the last one week, the fish traders are not getting enough buyers to purchase fish.
All the fish shops in the city are seen with an abundant supply of fish and the price has also dropped. Most of the fish traders are seen sitting idle with their fishes.
According to sources, for the last one week a big supply of fish is being noticed in all city markets. Especially from Tuesday to Friday, the city fish markets including the wholesale fish ones-New Market, Naodapara, Rajshahi Court and Shaheb Bazar experienced a huge supply of local varieties of fish.
Moreover, there was also a big supply of hilsa, Rupchanda and other sea-fishes. As a result of supply of glut in the markets, the price of all varieties of fish also dropped substantially. Due to a sudden drop in prices, many customers purchased a large quantity of fish on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. For this reason, the markets faced a shortage of buyers.
Fish traders at Shaheb Bazar, however, blamed a sudden death of fish in the ponds due to shortages of Oxygen there. They said, during the last one week, more than 600 metric tonnes of fish died during last week in various ponds of the city and surrounding upazilas due to excessive day-temperature and shortages of Oxygen in those ponds.
Moreover, they said an abundant supply of hilsa with comparatively low price in the markets, was also responsible for the drop in the price of local variety of fishes as well as a shortage of the customers. Due to the supply of hilsa at a low price, most of the customers were purchasing those leaving a shortage for customers of local varieties of fish.
On Saturday, hilsa was being sold at Tk 400 to Tk 800 per kg according to the size whereas four-day ago, it was sold at Tk 1,000 to Tk 1,400 per kg.
The cultivated Pabda price has dropped to Tk 300 per kg as against Tk 450 one week ago. Rupchanda is being sold at Tk 800 whereas the price was Tk 1,200 a week before.
Ruhi fish is selling at Tk 160 as against Tk 250, katla is selling at Tk 180 as against Tk 220, Mrigel at Tk 150 as against Tk 200.
The prices of all sorts of catfish like koi, pangas and magur have also dropped.
The prices of shrimp, chitol and batashi have also fallen and being sold at Tk 600, Tk 500 and Tk 400 respectively.
Fish trader Mokles at Shaheb Bazaar informed, the market situation was very bad. He opined the fish price of all varieties dropped due to an abundant supply of hilsha in the markets. In spite of a low price, there was no sufficient customer in the market. Fish trader Kashem at Sagarpara market informed, there was a huge sale of Hilsha fish in the markets due to low price but the selling of other varieties of fish dropped sharply even at a very low price.

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