In the face of the reluctance of rice millers and farmers to sell the staple food to government silos at the agreed prices, the food ministry on Tuesday decided to import rice from abroad reducing the import duty.
Food ministry in a statement citing Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder said, “Government will import rice to keep the market stable.”
According to the accounts of the food ministry, in this Boro season, the directorate general office for food managed so far could collect only 51 thousand tonnes of paddy and 25 thousand tonnes of rice against the primary target of 10 lakh tonnes of paddy and 11 lakh tonnes of rice and the bleak procurement progress worries the policymakers as rice millers and farmers refused to provide rice and paddy to government granaries.
To fill the vacuum, the food ministry is pitching for importing paddy and rice from Vietnam, Cambodia and India to have buffer stock.
The minster had reiterated, “The government’s previous plan to import rice in case the millers refuse to supply the rice at the agreed prices, despite a bumper harvest of paddy in the Boro season.”
Refusing to sell the rice at a government-quoted price of Tk 36 per kg, some mill owners want an increase in price, jeopardising the government’s plan to stockpile rice as part of its efforts to ensure food security during the coronavirus crisis.
Rice millers demanded a Tk 4 increase in per kg rice as an incentive.
The government offered Tk 36/kg for boiled rice to rice millers to buy 10 lakh metric tonnes of rice, Tk 35/kg for Atap rice for 1.5 lakh metric tonnes of rice and Tk 26/kg for per kilo paddy for 8 lakh metric tonnes.
sh/wi
