Budget must have measures to reduce cost of living

In a span of just one year life is now a burden to most of the middle and low-income people. They are perplexed to see how the cost of living is soaring. Those who could somehow manage to make their ends meet are now flat-broke. Salary hasn’t gone up in proportion to the rise in the prices of daily essentials.

Over the past few weeks, prices of essential items have been on the rise disproportionately putting marginalized people on the verge of annihilation. They are literally crying as they go to kitchen markets for their daily products. According to a report run by The Business Post, the prices of most of the essential items including rice, gram, oil, sugar, fish, meat and vegetables continue to increase. People are cutting down on many of their daily intakes to cope with the growing expense.

Compared year on year the price of rice rose by 8-14 per cent, sugar by 65 per cent, flour by 19-29 per cent, gram by 26 per cent, edible oil by 9 per cent, meat by 15 per cent, chicken by 37 per cent, egg by 21 per cent, milk by 31 per cent, potato by 74 per cent, onion by 98 per cent and ginger by 175 per cent. This is the data of the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB).

From this data of the TCB the plight of the people is easily understandable. The Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) more precisely revealed that the cost of living had increased by 10.08 per cent. A recent study conducted by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) showed that a family of four living in Dhaka would have to spend Tk22, 664 on food every month. To reduce the expense means to reduce the consumption of fish and meat.

If the key sources of protein are left out of the monthly budget then it will have a devastating effect on the health of people. Now the situation is more egregious as after the CPD study prices of all products including oil, sugar, fish, meat, milk, eggs, onion and garlic have gone up several times. The predicament of middle class people is no less severe than marginalized people. A middle class family has to spend 60 per cent of its monthly budget on food. If a family income is in between Tk20, 000-25, 000 it can’t afford to spend on the education of their children. What is left after meeting the demand for food is not good enough for such a family to send their kids to school. As a result, education is also being hampered.

Inflation is eating away at the savings of the middle-class people. When inflation rises they have to spend from their savings leading to a vast majority of these people to lose their savings. At this moment, if the next budget doesn’t take all those severely-affected people into consideration they will be left with nothing to survive. The government in the next budget must expand the social safety net and increase the tax-free income limit.

Along with them, the government can focus on reducing import duties on some essential products to lessen the pressure on the domestic market, solving the dollar crisis. And of course steps should be taken to employ our vast section of unemployed people. If youths can be given jobs, it will reduce the inflationary pressure on people. We hope that the government will take measures in the budget taking into consideration the plight of the poor, middle-class and marginalized people.