The New Nation - Internet Edition

Talha Bin Habib

The price of essential commodities started falling yesterday following the down trend in the international market and government move to contain it to a tolerable level.

Commodities like soybean oil, rice, flour, sugar and some other items were selling at cheaper rate on Friday in comparison with the last week price.

The high ups of the government have vowed to break the market syndicate to keep the price of essential items to a tolerable level.

Finance Minister Abul Mall Abul Muhit and Commerce Minister Col (Retd) Faruque Khan said, the government would take all possible means to arrest the skyrocketing prices of essentials.

" The government will intervene directly into the market to eliminate market syndication and contain the price to a tolerable level," said Muhit.

He also said the government intervention would become inevitable if the market syndicates failed to keep the price to a tolerable level.

Commerce Minister also expressed his optimism that the prices would come down by next one month.

"The skyrocketing price of essentials would come down even more than what people expected" he said while visiting the city's Karwan Bazar kitchen markets on Tuesday.

The minister discussed with the business leaders and gave them his cell phone number and asked them to report should there be extortion and' syndicate' in the markets.

"There were syndicates and extortion in the markets that pushed the prices up. Still there are syndicates, but they will not be able to do anything in the future," he said.

Asked on how the government would check the market price the commerce minister said the government was observing the international markets.

"We will discuss with the business community how they can sell their commodities profiting not more than 10 to 12 percent," he mentioned.

He, however, said the government did not want to control the market. It only wants to make sure that the prices are reasonable. Replying to a question he said none was extorting money from the market now.

He also said that additional transportation cost and extortion also added to the price hike. These would not happen again in the market.

Asked why prices are not coming down in retail markets despite low prices in the wholesale markets, he said, " We will take further actions for that."

In the retail markets soybean was sold between Tk 85 and Tk 88 per kg which was Tk 100 to Tk 105 in the last week. Five litre canned different brands of soybean oil was selling between Tk 430 and Tk 445 which was Tk 540 to Tk 550 in the previous week. Per kg of loose ata was sold at Tk 23 which was Tk 28 to Tk 30 in the last week and packed ata containing two kg's was sold at Tk 52 yesterday.

Coarse rice was sold at Tk 26 per kg yesterday, which was Tk 30, Nazirshail was sold between Tk 36 and Tk 38 per kg which was Tk 44 to Tk 46 over the past few weeks. The price of different winter vegetables were reducing gradually over the last some days.