Polishing pushes up rice price by Tk3-4: Sadhan

Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder has said nutritional quality of rice suffers and at the same time price increases by Tk3-4 due to polishing in rice mill.

Nutrition has to be supplied from outside as mill owners polish ordinary rice to make it shiny.

The minister was speaking as a Chief Guest at a seminar titled ‘Commercial Journey of Nutritional Rice in Bangladesh’ at Hotel Intercontinental in Dhaka on Thursday.

Officials of the Ministry of Food said Iron, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin B-1, folic acid were to be added to rice to give them nutritional quality.

In order to make this rice easily available at general consumer level primarily five companies have taken the initiative to supply it to sales centers and super shops of Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi and Chittagong region.

They have already conducted trial marketing at Mohammadpur Krishi Market, Karwan Bazar, Agora and Swapna super shop, Chaal Dal and Matrix Bazar online markets in Dhaka city.

The minister said five types of polishes are given at mill including, wax polish, saline polish and silky polish.

On the one hand it takes away nutrients and on the other hand electricity, cost of expensive polishing machine, manpower and other factors cost Tk3-4 extra per kg.