Home ›› 20 Mar 2022 ›› Front
The cost of lentil has gone up at an alarming rate, with the city kitchen market witnessing 59 per cent price hike in recent days.
A recent visit to the commodity market found that the price of the edible seeds has risen by Tk 10 per kilogramme in the last 10-15 days.
Traders said the declining import as well as low domestic production has shot up the price.
The import of lentil declined by 88 per cent between July-December compared to that in the period of January-Jun this year.
“Not even a kilogramme of lentil has been imported in December last although 3,000 metric tonnes were imported in November,” according to the importers.
The city’s kitchen markets including Segunbagicha, Mailbag and Rampura were found selling coarse variety of lentil at Tk 105 to Tk 110 per kg which was priced at Tk 95 to Tk 100 a kg around two weeks ago.
The medium variety of lentil sold at Tk 125 to Tk 130 per kilogramme which now costs Tk 115 to Tk 120 a kg while the fine variety is now Tk 140 a kg which was Tk 130 earlier.
Mostafizur Rahman, a retailer in Segunbagicha kitchen market, said the coarse lentil buyers are low-income people. The lentil price has crossed Tk 100 per kg. A portion of low-income people is staving themselves of buying lentil.
According to the state-run Treading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) data on March 16, the price of coarse lentil has increased by 17 per cent per kg while the medium one by 36 per cent and the fine one by 52 per cent in recent days compared to the same period a year ago.
The year before fine lentil sold at Tk 100 to Tk 110 while the medium variety Tk 80 to Tk 85 and the coarse variety Tk 65 to Tk 70.
Bangladesh Pulse Traders Association president Shafi Mahmud said: “The domestic cultivation and production of lentil is declining year on year and our import dependency is rising.
Now the dollar rate is high. So the import cost is also up. In addition, the price of lentil in the international market is also high.”
All these issues hold the importers back and the traders are worried that the domestic lentil production will decline this year too due to damage by rain, he added.
According to the data, the country’s annul demand for lentil is about 6-7 lakh metric tonne which is fulfilled by import.
The Bangladesh Trade and Tariff Commission survey of 2020 showed that the country’s monthly demand for lentil is about 35,000 metric tonne, but during Ramadan, the demand goes up by 80,000 metric tonne.
The import of lentil hit 4.97 lakh metric tonne in the period of Jun-July of Fiscal Year 2020-21 while only 1.69 metric tonne was imported during July-December of FY22.
The import was 3.21 lakh metric tonne in the first half of 2021 while it was 1.69 lakh metric tonne in the second half of the year that saw a decline by 88 per cent.
