Finance Minister Muhith backs commerce minister’s view on rice prices

Finance Minister AMA Muhith has backed his cabinet colleague Tofail Ahmed on not expecting rice prices below Tk 40 per kg.

“The commerce minister is right, prices should be at Tk 40,” he said on Friday while addressing the National Food Security Day organized by the food ministry.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Minister Tofail said it would ‘unrealistic’ to expect the rice prices to fall below Tk 40 if the farmers’ interests were to be protected.

“When prices dropped, the media said farmers were facing losses. We must give importance to our farmers. We will be harming ourselves in the long run if they lose interest to cultivate rice,” he said.

Rice prices  started to hike when unseasonal floods in April last year damaged crops in the northeastern backswamps or Haors.

A second round of floods during the monsoon hit rice production badly with the government’s rice stocks depleting below 200,000 tonnes in mid last year.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith (centre) is flanked by Food Minister Qamrul Islam (right) and Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury (left) on Friday.

The situation worsened with price-gouging by rogue traders, which forced the government to open import initiatives and revise down the duty twice, but the prices are yet to come down.

According to the government’s Trading Corporation of Bangladesh or TCB data, coarse rice was sold between Tk 44 and 46 a kilogram on Friday.

Finance Minister Muhith said that he considers Tk 40 for a kg as reasonable considering the production cost and purchasing power of the consumers.

He, however, denied that the government was in a crisis of over rice. “This is not a crisis, rather a temporary problem. And the food ministry has moved to open imports to solve that."