Rice sale under OMS begins in districts from October

The Ministry of Food (MoF) will restart selling rice under open market sale (OMS) programme at the district level from October next.
The programme was suspended since May last following the start of ongoing Boro procurement drive across the country, a high official said.
"We will send a proposal to the MoF soon for restarting selling rice at the district level from October next," a director of the Directorate General of Food told the FE Saturday.
Earlier, the government fixed the target to procure 1.10 million tonnes of Boro rice this year. The procurement started from May last.
Of the total, 1.0 million tonnes will be rice while 0.15 million tonnes will be paddy. The Boro rice and paddy procurement drive will continue for four months.
The procurement price of per kg of Boro rice has been fixed at Tk 31 while that of paddy at Tk 20. The production cost of paddy was Tk 17.50 while that of rice Tk 26.50 per kg.
"At present, around one hundred trucks have been deployed at different areas of the capital for selling rice and atta under the OMS programme," Controller of Dhaka Rationing Sukumar Chandra Roy told the FE Saturday.
The OMS programme is going on at all the divisions. Each of the truck gets 1.5 tonnes of rice and one tonne of atta.
The government introduced OMS programme as part of its commitment to provide food at subsidised rates to the marginalised people. The programme has got tremendous response from the people, especially of the lower income group.
At present, coarse variety of rice is being sold at between Tk 33 and Tk 34 in retail markets which attracted more consumers of the lower income group to buy from the OMS.
Except Saturday, rice and atta are being sold from 9 am to 5 pm throughout the week in the capital. Under the OMS programme, which is also going on at all the districts, only atta is being sold.
The official said if there are nine wards in a district, then there will be nine dealers and each of them (dealers) will get one tonne of atta for sale.
Similarly, if there are 12 wards in a district, then there will be similar number of dealers. And each of them will get one tonne of atta.
At present, per kg of rice is being sold at Tk 24 while atta (flour) at Tk 22 under the OMS programme. Each of the consumers can purchase five kg rice and five kg atta separately.