133.3 mln benefit from Bangladesh government's subsidised sales of food items in 15 months

Published 26 May,2021 via The Financial Express - Approximately 133.3 million people have benefitted from the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh's (TCB) open market sale (OMS) programme in the last 15 months.

The state-owned agency sells key essential items at subsidized rates under the OMS programme to keep their prices within the buying capacity of the common people, if necessary, said a press release issued by the commerce ministry on Tuesday.

Generally, it sells essential commodities, including sugar, edible oil, gram, lentils, date, potato, and onion from trucks and through dealers in different parts of the country.

Some 233,794 tonnes of such commodities were sold at subsidized prices to 33.3 million families from the OMS programme during the period between March 2020 and May 2021, the press release said.

The commerce ministry was closely monitoring the domestic production, international markets, imports, and domestic market conditions of essential products, it added.

It also mentioned that the prices of essential commodities remained stable during the last two Ramadan due to time-befitting steps taken by the commerce ministry. The commodity market had also been relatively stable during the lockdown period.

Due to regular monitoring and evaluation by the commerce ministry, the prices of essential goods except edible oil remained stable in the last one year especially during the holy month of Ramadan.

The ministry claimed that the prices of edible oil increased quite a bit in the market in recent times, but the market of such most-used cooking ingredient was fairly stable during the period between 2014 and June 2020.

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