Need for constant price monitoring
Monday, 24 May 2010
Normally, one would expect that economic factors such as scarcities of goods against their higher demand, snags in production or distribution and the better purchasing power of consumers, as responsible for driving up prices. But to a very large extent and most of the time, price rises in Bangladesh have no connection to such economic factors.
Non economic factors such as sheer greed, profiteering instincts and the same getting facilitated by the view that markets should function on their own under free market principles with the least intervention from the state, these help prices to rise . Therefore, this government should do well to learn from these experiences of previous governments and their willful or otherwise dereliction of duty to sustain close monitoring over markets and the due law enforcement to that end.
This writer remembers well the period for a while under the immediate past government when, indeed, prices in the kitchen markets were fast normalizing from the daily arrival of BDR and police into the markets and their talking to shop keepers and even squatter traders of perishable goods on the road sides. They would do such things as asking a seller of cauliflower why he demanded ten taka more for a piece in the afternoon than what he demanded in the morning. They asked retailers why they were demanding at retail levels significantly higher prices than they should after keeping their reasonable profits.
All of these things certainly had an effect. The traders did not like it any but they were obliged to restrain their profiteering instincts and the same paid dividends to the previously badly exploited consumers. But no sooner, this vigilance was withdrawn that the same old fashioned profiteering crept back.
So, there is a lesson to be learnt from this to be only reapplied now.
Anisul Haque
Dhanmondi
Dhaka.
Non economic factors such as sheer greed, profiteering instincts and the same getting facilitated by the view that markets should function on their own under free market principles with the least intervention from the state, these help prices to rise . Therefore, this government should do well to learn from these experiences of previous governments and their willful or otherwise dereliction of duty to sustain close monitoring over markets and the due law enforcement to that end.
This writer remembers well the period for a while under the immediate past government when, indeed, prices in the kitchen markets were fast normalizing from the daily arrival of BDR and police into the markets and their talking to shop keepers and even squatter traders of perishable goods on the road sides. They would do such things as asking a seller of cauliflower why he demanded ten taka more for a piece in the afternoon than what he demanded in the morning. They asked retailers why they were demanding at retail levels significantly higher prices than they should after keeping their reasonable profits.
All of these things certainly had an effect. The traders did not like it any but they were obliged to restrain their profiteering instincts and the same paid dividends to the previously badly exploited consumers. But no sooner, this vigilance was withdrawn that the same old fashioned profiteering crept back.
So, there is a lesson to be learnt from this to be only reapplied now.
Anisul Haque
Dhanmondi
Dhaka.