Government is not succeeding in bringing down prices of essentials

Has the government left the markets of daily essentials to chance with the thought that one day the menacing trend of price rise will automatically be solved? If that is so, why is the government there at the helm of everything? For about the last one year or so, the price of everything increased several times with gaps of months or even weeks, leaving the poorer section of society hard-pressed to manage two square meals a day, but the government has not come before the people with reasons why the market condition in Bangladesh has become such scary.

Initially from the top of the government, it was explained that Ukraine-Russia war to be blamed for the shooting of the price of essentials. True, that was the time when price rise started but Bangladesh alone was not the victim of worldwide food inflation, the whole world was. But soon, the price of essentials in the world market came down with steps taken internationally, but in Bangladesh not only did the price not come down, but it kept picking up again and again.

During this Ramzan followed by Eid-ul-fitr, the latest wave of price hike of food items upset most the lower- and lower-middle-income people. Take for example, the price of potato, a very essential vegetable which is produced locally. Six kilograms of potato were available with Tk 100 just ahead of Ramzan, but after the holy month began, its price kept rising, now you will not be able to get three kilograms of potato for the same amount. How could that be? Clearly, the potato market has been manipulated but there is none to see this, but the consumers.

Similarly, most green vegetables have become luxurious items for people because of their price. Besides, fish, chicken, meat – every animal source of protein – have seen another fresh hike during Ramzan and Eid. The government data itself says that the price of onions has increased by 50 per cent, garlic by 55 per cent, ginger by 28 per cent and sugar by 19 per cent in the past one month. About two weeks after Eid, their prices have not come down.
If this market condition prevails, would the people survive inhaling air and drinking water only? The working-class people have really been going through an unimaginably tough time as their daily expenditure now far outweighs their earnings. Curiously, the government is busier to remain in power through fraudulent ways keeping mum all about the market condition. They do not have time to see the plights of people.
It is futile to expect that this government whose corruption and plundering of public money has brought the economy to its present hopeless condition would be able to fix the problems.