Unrealistic battle
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Squeezing the money supply through a tighter monetary policy and some other mechanisms to control the current price may lead to reduced consumption but it would not help realise its benign object. These policies may drive down prices of only locally produced vegetables and some other domestic items. But how would these deplete the prices of imported essential items, like edible oils, lentils, rice and wheat, which are tagged with the international market prices?
Coarse flour of the Pushti brand is now being sold at the record price of Tk 32 per kg at groceries in Dhaka. Rice is sold at Tk 2.0 to Tk 4.0, above the price per kg before the flood. Better weather condition, permitting smooth local supply, may hopefully normalise its prices marginally. But the price may not come down substantially as the flood has damaged standing crop on a massive scale. Affected farmers are more likely to retain their surplus stocks to meet their own future needs.
But the furore about the abnormally high price of green chilli, reportedly Tk 180 per kg, seems obnoxious. How on earth can its supply and price be normal when its plants submerged by flood waters have mostly rotten out?
Nasreen Jehan
Mohamedpur, Dhaka
Coarse flour of the Pushti brand is now being sold at the record price of Tk 32 per kg at groceries in Dhaka. Rice is sold at Tk 2.0 to Tk 4.0, above the price per kg before the flood. Better weather condition, permitting smooth local supply, may hopefully normalise its prices marginally. But the price may not come down substantially as the flood has damaged standing crop on a massive scale. Affected farmers are more likely to retain their surplus stocks to meet their own future needs.
But the furore about the abnormally high price of green chilli, reportedly Tk 180 per kg, seems obnoxious. How on earth can its supply and price be normal when its plants submerged by flood waters have mostly rotten out?
Nasreen Jehan
Mohamedpur, Dhaka