Home ›› 02 Nov 2022 ›› Front
The government is set to procure eight lakh tonnes of paddy and boiled rice from farmers and mill owners in Aman season this year.
Three lakh tonnes of paddy will be bought directly from farmers at Tk 28 per kg while another five lakh tonnes will be purchased from rice millers at Tk 42 per kg.
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder on Tuesday confirmed the matter after a meeting of the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit under the Food Ministry at the Secretariat.
Last year, the government targeted to procure the same amount of paddy at Tk 27 per kg from farmers and Tk 40 per kg from millers. Compared to last year, paddy prices hiked by 3.7 per cent (Tk 1) per kg and rice prices by 5 per cent (Tk 2) this year.
On the contrary, cost in per kg paddy production was raised by Tk 4 to TK 6 while farmers will be also expecting greater profits as inflation hiked by 8 to 9 per cent this year, said the farmers and millers. They will count losses if they sell grains to the government at the fixed rate which may potentially increase uncertainty to fulfill government’s target.
Agriculture Minister Mohammad Abdur Razzaque, Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi, health Minister Zahid Maleque and State Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Enamur Rahman were also present at the meeting.
Agriculture Minister Mohammad Abdur Razzaque said that “The government will have to pay subsidy of Tk 46,000 crore for fertilizer till June of next year. Still we won’t take any risks; there will be no scarcity of fertilizer.”
Meanwhile, experts opined that government fixed price fo paddy is inadequate as many farmers cultivated Aman through irrigation due to lack of rain while attack of insects also increased alarmingly.
Farmers had to spend 60 per cent more for pesticides while government officially hiked the price of fertilizer Tk 6 (38 per cent) per kg in August, experts said, adding that spiraling inflation also pushed the labour cost much higher. Aman production on each bighas of land was around Tk 3000 to Tk 4000 costlier for farmers which indicates at least Tk 4 to Tk 6 hike in production cost of each mounds of Aman paddy.
General secretary of Rice Mill Owners’ Group in Naogaon, Forhad Hossain said that Aman production cost was much high this year but government failed to increase price at same rate.
“Specially, production cost was significantly high in our district due to additional cost of fertilizer, labour and pesticides. The farmers had to pay Tk 1600 for pesticides this year who only paid Tk 1000 last year.”, he said.
According to the date of Agricultural Extension Department, a total of 1,49,58400 tons of Aman paddy was produced last year. In the incumbent year, the government has targeted to produce 1,63,45,300 tons of Aman paddy.
