Govt raises edible oil, sugar import ceiling to $5.0b a year

The government has decided to raise the edible oil, sugar, coal-import ceiling sans any letter of credit (LC) to US$ 5.0 million for commercial purposes on a case-to-case basis.
Commercial importers will be allowed to import refined cooking oil, sugar and coal valued up to $ 5.0 million annually, without opening of LCs/purchase or sale agreement, on prior approval, against the existing ceiling of $0.5 million, trade officials said.
According to the current Import Policy Order 2021-24, a commercial importer now can import any importable item worth $ 0.5 million annually by making payment against its price from Bangladesh.
The decision on raising the ceiling was made at a meeting of the stakeholders on the Import Policy Order 2021-24 with senior secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh in the chair last Thursday.
Against the backdrop of coal shortage, recently two or more coal-fired power plants were shut. The ministry took the decision on raising the import limit for facilitating power generation to address the nagging high-summer outages, a senior official said.
On the other hand, prices of edible oils and sugar increased in the country in the last couple of months and the trend still existed in the kitchen market. The increased prices of the widely consumed items were also hitting the commoners hard, a source said.
Currently, sugar has become both scarce and expensive. The government could not bring under control the price of sugar despite taking multiple steps. And some state agencies often met with the traders for taking necessary steps to stabilise the prices of commodities.
When contacted, a senior official said "We have discussed at the meeting that commercial importers will be set an enhanced import ceiling for refined edible oil, sugar and coal on a case to case basis before making payment from Bangladesh without opening any LC or through purchase or sale agreement so that the country's foreign exchange reserves are not burdened amid the shortage of the greenback".
He, however, said commercial importers would have to take prior approval from the commerce ministry to import the two consumer items and coal.

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