Price of rice still high

The flash floods in March wiped out 90 percent of the Boro crop resulting in 1 million tonnes of crops. Then we had the fungal outbreak in some 19 districts which did further damage. Now it is August and the government is about to sign a deal with Cambodia for import of a million tonnes of rice. What has come as a shock for the market is that private importers have 7,000 tonnes of rice imported from India waiting on trucks at Hili in Dinajpur and Benapole in anticipation of a further cut in duty. That decision is still pending as the National Board of Revenue has not received any such order. 

This is not the way to go about business during a market crisis where the price of coarse rice per kilo has been hovering around Tk45 for the last two weeks, which is a rise of more than 40 percent. Yes, we understand that a slew of agreements are in the making with a number of countries, but why is there so much confusion about slashing of import duty between the ministry of food and the government? As we are facing a crisis of rice stocks, is it not prudent to expedite agreement on import duty so that those trucks can get moving to wholesale markets and citizens can breathe a little easier with some form of price stabilisation? We urge authorities to decide quickly on the import tariff because our public granaries are depleting fast.