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Download PDF The interim government yesterday decided to cut import duties on commodities, ensure increased supply commodities in the market and ask the joint forces to coordinate their drives targeting the corrupt and dishonest businesses only.
High-level officials of Bangladesh Bank (BB) and the armed forces in a meeting on Tuesday with Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed in the chair discussed ways to restrain the spiralling prices of essentials, sources said.
Sources said BB officials in the meeting drew attention on various negative impacts of the ongoing drives by the joint forces. They observed that the drives panicked genuine traders.
The meeting decided to ask the law enforcers to coordinate their drives against hoarding and corrupt businesses and take assistance for the drives from government departments concerned — National Board of Revenue (NBR), Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and BB.
Sources said as per the meeting decision, the NBR from now on will deal issues related to tax evasion while the ACC will launch drives against corruption. The BB will watch over money laundering issues.
The government also decided to intensify import of essentials through the state-run trading agency, Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB), to reduce the prices of essentials, added the sources.
Besides, the government is to cut import duties on a number of essential commodities including rice, lentils and salt, NBR sources said.
Yesterday, ending a pre-budget meeting with editors of different newspapers and private television stations, finance Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam told journalists that import duties on essential commodities would be reduced very soon to maintain the smooth supply of essentials on the market.
The adviser said the government is going to involve state-run agencies to increasing the supply of products on the market.
According to a TCB report, the prices of essentials have been on the rise to a great extent during the recent years.
A TCB report prepared on yesterday’s market price shows prices of all types of rice went up by 2 to 13 per cent in the last month wile price of coarse rice, mostly consumed by poor people, rose by 18 per cent.
In last one year, wheat prices went up by about 31 per cent while of soybean oil prices increased by 41.49 per cent.
The TCB data also shows that onion prices went up by 12.82 per cent in the last one month while the price increase was 91.30 per cent in the last one year.
A Bangladesh Bank (BB) official told The Daily Star that there is no scarcity in production of commodities and import is adequate in recent days. “Indiscriminate drives against hoarding and illegal structures have broken the supply chain from big cities to rural areas and resulted in the price hike.”
He referred to the data compiled by agriculture ministry that shows that production of Aaush paddy was 22.24 lakh MT and Aman was 1.28 crore MT this year while Aaush was 20.15 lakh MT and Aman 1.22 crore in the previous year.
The BB official also differed with the apprehension that import had declined in recent time. He said BB data shows importers opened LCs (letter of credits) of $33.93 million for rice in last month (February), which was $13.09 million in February last year. He said importers opened LCs of $9.62 million for wheat in last month, which was $5.39 million in February last year. In case of edible oil, the figure rose to $40.42 million from $28.69 million, he said.
Referring to harassment by the joint forces, a private bank official said his bank disbursed Tk 12 crore in loans to a trader in Bogra for importing pulses, but after the trader imported the pulses, the joint forces recently seized the pulses on allegation of hoarding. Furthermore, a lower court directed to sell the pulses on auction. The importer did not hoard pulses and he has all the rights to keep those in his possession for two months from import.
Asked about such drives, finance adviser yesterday told the reporters, “I will not strongly tell that this is totally baseless and it will improve [the situation] within a short time.”
“The government would like to assure all that no genuine businessman shall be harassed. And the chief adviser has already mentioned this,” the adviser added.
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