The government's own oversight reveals a discrepancy between what consumers pay and the fixed prices for necessities.

 

It discovered a large disparity between the prices the government had established and the real prices at which the commodities are trading in the marketplace, one day after the government set prices for 29 necessities.

The Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) of the government established wholesale and retail prices on Friday for 29 important items, which included beef, mutton, potatoes, eggplants, onions, and broiler chicken.

The directive, effective immediately, came through the issuance of a notification signed by DAM Director General Masud Karim, apparently to the relief of general consumers who have been paying exorbitant prices for essentials since the beginning of the Muslim fasting month.

DAM decided that the general quality dates should not be priced at more than around Tk185 per kg, but TCB finds that buyers have to pay at least Tk280 to purchase even the lowest grade of dates available in the market.

While fixing the maximum retail prices of 29 essential items on Friday, DAM noted that producers’ selling prices were much cheaper, and even after making good profits at wholesale and retail levels, traders could offer consumers much more reasonable prices than what they are offering now.

For example, DAM found farmers’ selling price of onions at Tk44 per kg, as against a production cost of Tk34 only. Then it fixed the wholesale and retail prices of onions at Tk53 and Tk65 respectively, but in reality, consumers have to pay much more than that to buy onions.

DAM sent out its instructions regarding the prices of essentials it had set to all district and police administrations, city corporations, and the consumers’ rights directorate for proper actions. However, consumers find no impact in the market.

Md Kamruzzaman, a deputy director of DAM, told Dhaka Tribune that as per a 2018 farm product marketing law, the Department of Agricultural Marketing is mandated to monitor and ensure fair prices of essentials in the market.

"But we don't have the resources to implement it. We hardly have two or three people in each of the districts. So we expect cooperation from other agencies in implementing fair prices."

Referring to Friday’s DAM initiative regarding the prices of 29 essential items, Kamruzzaman said the department has sought the assistance of the consumers' rights directorate, city corporations, and executive magistrates for proper implementation and market monitoring.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official of the Directorate of National Consumers Rights Protection (DNCRP) told Dhaka Tribune that they're trying their best to conduct market drives regularly so that consumers aren’t cheated. However, he said DNCRP has resource constraints too.

Consumers expressed resentment at such ad hoc measures like fixing just prices of products by the government, making those prices public through announcements, and then seeing no impact in reality.

A former research director of the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), M. Asaduzzaman, advised that appropriate action be done against the widespread illegal toll collected from the entire agricultural value chain and stated that such price fixing by government organizations would not make life easier for consumers.