Govt must boost efforts to bring down prices of essentials

The soaring prices of essentials have pushed the low-income people across the country to queue in front of the sales points to buy essential commodities at subsidised rates, as the first phase of Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) started its commodity sale programme among one crore families on Monday. According to a news report in The New Nation on Tuesday, long queues were found behind TCB trucks, as price hike of essentials has badly hit the poor and the middle-income group people, making it difficult for them to meet their daily needs. Initially four items — lentil, sugar, soybean oil and onion – are being sold in the country, including the capital, through the designated TCB dealers.
Meanwhile, a survey of the World Food Programme (WFP) said 68 per cent of the people in the country are struggling to buy food. The sky-high prices of food — which 88 per cent of the surveyed indentified as a major challenge — are getting harder to deal with: 64 per cent said they took out loans and 29 per cent of families said they used their savings to buy food in August. As revealed by Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), food inflation reached 9.08 per cent in September after hitting 9.94 per cent in August — the highest since the ten-year of the FY 2012-13. The non-food inflation reached 9.13 per cent in September. Now the question is: How will the poor survive in such a situation?
The high inflation hovering nearing double digit, according to experts, is affecting people’s purchasing capacity, and thereby compromising their health and future. They suggested, it is important that the government create a national relief fund, instead of separate food programmes and project-based initiatives, to provide long-term food assistance to low-income groups of people. True some impediments like the Russia-Ukraine war and erratic weather will remain indefinitely. But their consequences can be minimised through implementing proper policies.
Indeed, the prices of essentials went up following the August fuel price hike and rising import costs followed by appreciation of the US dollar and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Besides, market syndication by traders was another reason for the high commodity prices in the local market. The people are being forced to spend less and less on food, as they can’t cut spending on house rent, utilities, healthcare and transportation, the cost of which also jumped.
Evidently, things have reached a point where the extremely high living cost has created a dystopian reality for the ordinary people. The authorities should bring food prices within the reach of the low-income groups of people through greater market interventions.