Bangladesh News

The government has initiated steps to review the anti-hoarding regulations to set limits on the quantity of essential goods the businessmen can store for a certain period of time.

The government is also mulling reintroduction of the business intelligence activities to intervene market manipulation so that the importers and other businessmen cannot dictate price artificially.

“We will sit with the law ministry and other ministries concerned soon in order to review the existing hoarding regulation,” Commerce Secretary Feroz Ahmed told reporters after a meeting with businessmen at the commerce ministry conference room.

The ministry is assessing options about how the now defunct market intelligence system can be reintroduced under the Consumer Protection Rights, the secretary said.

Earlier Finance and Commerce Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam also indicated the same steps at a meeting with the representatives of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry at his ministry.

He said he asked the commerce ministry to review the anti-hoarding regulations and other related laws to bring discipline in the consumers market.

As part of the initiatives to check prices of essential commodities, the commerce ministry met with the trade bodies, importers, wholesalers and retailers.

The much talked about import syndication system was discussed in the meeting where the commerce secretary said businessmen did not complain about import syndication.

“Importers who can import a large amount of goods at a time generally get some price competitiveness. It cannot be termed syndication,” he said.

“Under the existing import policy there is no barrier to anybody importing any goods of any quantity. So we cannot create barrier to any importer. But we should introduce more competitiveness in order to make the price situation reasonable.”

He said initiative will be taken so that more importers feel free to import more products.

Opening of letter of credit (LC) has not reduced, rather statistics show that the LC opening has increased during the last three months compared to the previous three months, he said.

Businessmen told the reporters that production of some essential commodities including onion, garlic and wheat has decreased this year in India and some other countries from where Bangladesh imports.

Prices of onion, garlic and wheat may increase in three to four months when the local production will be used up, they said.