Consumers looking for soybean alternatives

An acute edible oil supply crunch has forced consumers to switch to soybean substitutes as their essential kitchen ingredient.

Groceries have almost run out of soybean oil, displaying a few other available options like mustard oil, sunflower oil, and rice bran oil.

Since the acute supply shortage began several days before Eid-ul-Fitr, consumers were seen desperately searching for soybean and palm oils in the market, which continued after the new price had taken effect on Friday.

At superstores and grocery shops at various points in the capital, customers were seen picking an altercation with grocers over the unavailability of soybean oil even after the massive price hike of both bottled and non-bottled versions.

Simon Zakaria, a consumer buying groceries at Taltola market on Saturday, said, “I have been using Teer soybean oil for my family for the last three years, but even after moving from shops to shops, I could not manage a single bottle of the brand, not even any other local one.”

“I have purchased a five-litre sunflower oil bottle of the Indian Kings brand for Tk 1,875 today. It cost me almost double the amount I spend on the regular purchase,” he said.

Visiting the Meena Bazar outlet at Maghbazar, this correspondent found a few foreign brands of bottled oil displayed on the shelves while consumers asked for local soybean oil brands several times.

Mahfuz Ahmed, assistant manager of the superstore, said, “We used to sell all local brands, except for Pusti, at our shop, but we have not been getting the supply of those at all since several days before Eid.”

“Now we are selling foreign brands like Kings, Italitalia, and Fortunes, mostly from India, that were in our stock,” he said. “As local brands are much cheaper and more popular than foreign ones, consumers search for these,” he also said, adding the sales of foreign brands were good.

“We are selling bottled oil based on our previous purchase rates and waiting for soybean supply with new prices. No new foreign or local brands have arrived yet. We do not even know when supply would be normal.”

Vendors in Mirpur, Basabo, New Market, Malibagh, and Rampura kitchen markets also said companies were not supplying bottled soybean oil.

However, around 22.9 million litres of soybean oil arrived at the Chattogram port on Thursday while a tanker carrying 13,000 tonnes of palm oil was set to reach Bangladesh on Friday, according to the Chittagong Port Authority.