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Published : 09 May 2023, 01:45 AM
In February this year, traders and sugar refiners had played an elaborate blame game while sugar, an essential item in any Bangladeshi kitchen, was getting pricier. Supply was scarce, so the prices of the available sugar went up even though the government had set a margin of the maximum sugar price per kg.
Eventually, the government bowed down to the pressure from the refiners to increase the price, and by Apr 7, in the middle of the month of Ramadan, the government had set a new price range - Tk 104 for each kg of loose sugar and Tk 109 for each kg of packaged sugar.
Since the Eid-ul-Fitr, though, similar techniques from February of raising prices are at play again.
A recent visit to Dhaka’s multiple grocery markets revealed that traders were selling loose sugar at Tk 140 per kg while packaged sugar was unavailable.
While there is a massive sugar crisis in the market, commerce ministry sources, requesting anonymity, confirmed to bdnews24.com that refiners have already submitted a proposal to raise the loose sugar price to Tk 125 and the packaged sugar to Tk 135.
When approached, Ruhul Amin, the director general of the ministry’s import and internal trade cell, refused to comment on the record about the topsy-turvy state of the sugar market in Bangladesh.
Instead, he referred the questions to the secretary of the ministry, Tapan Kanti Ghosh. The secretary has not responded to any of the calls and text messages from bdnews24.com in the last two days.
Meanwhile, the traders bdnews24.com interviewed for the article played the same tune, raising issues like price manipulation and unavailability.
Md Naeem, a trader in Dhaka’s Karwan Bazar, said the situation is so dire that prices change hourly.
“Yesterday morning [Sunday], I bought a sack full of loose sugar [50 kg] from a wholesaler at Tk 6,370. In the afternoon, I returned to buy another bag, but now they [wholesalers] were asking Tk 6,400,” he said.
“On average, a kg of loose sugar is Tk 140 in Karwan Bazar now.”
Naeem and some other retailers said they are told by the market insiders that the prices will be changed again.
A salesman at Amin General Store, a wholesaler in Karwan Bazar, said sugar is still available in the market.
“But the price is high. Now we are selling each sack at Tk 6,200.”
Officials of City Group and Deshbandhu Group, two major conglomerates which are in the business of selling packaged sugar in the market, also have yet to respond to the multiple attempts made by bdnews24.com to get their comment on the unstable sugar market situation.
AHM Shafiquzzaman, the director general of the Directorate of National Consumers Right Protection, said they are waiting for the ministry’s decision on the new price proposal.
“If the new prices are fixed, my directorate will conduct vigilance in the market to implement it,” he said.
