Govt to monitor supply chain of essentials

Rezaul Karim | Published: December 16, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

The government is going to start monitoring the supply chain of the essential items both in wholesale and retail markets soon, officials said.
Besides, the number of letters of credit (LCs) of the goods will be supervised along with the LC margin, they said.
The decision came at the meeting of the review and prediction cell of the ministry of commerce (MoC) recently.
An MoC official concerned said: "We will select some daily necessary commodities and start our drive to supervise the supply chain of the items."
"We want to keep the prices of essential items within the common people's purchasing capacity. For this, we have to look after the market situation," an MoC additional secretary told the FE Monday.
"We sat in a meeting on the supply chain of a good number of essential items. In the meeting, we discussed the initiatives, necessary to keep supply and prices of the necessary goods stable for consumers," he said.
Initially, the MoC wants to work on the supply chain of rice, flour, edible oil, sugar, lentil, onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric and dry chilly and at the same time the ministry will monitor the number of LCs of the items, he added.
"As a member country of the World Trade Organisation (WHO) the government has no authority to control prices of the items according to the free market economy. So, we may only monitor the supply chain and number of LCs," said a Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) official.
"The ministry will closely monitor the supply situation to protect the common people from the menace of abnormal price hike," said a senior official of MoC.
"The MoC cell is considering supervising the supply chain of the wholesale and retail markets of the essential items. They will also collect information on their price and stock situation during supervision," a deputy secretary of MoC told the FE.
If any kind of abnormal situation arises on supply chain in the market, the cell team will take action against the responsible traders according to the existing law.
"We hope that the measures taken by government will keep the market stable with adequate supply of essential items throughout the year," he added.
In June, the government formed some 14 inspection teams to monitor price movements and prevent any untoward situation in the commodity markets, especially in the city, during the holy month of Ramadan.
The LC margin means the extent of collateral deposited by an LC opener. Presently, this is usually fixed through the mutual understanding between bankers and customers.Â Â
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