THE government’s bid to keep kitchen market stable has largely failed, as prices continue their relentless climb. Most vegetables marked a fresh price hike this week, with green chillis selling for Tk 300–350 a kilogram in Dhaka. Traders claim that excessive rain for several days and the suspension of trading activities at land ports for eight days because of Durga Puja have created a supply shortage. Some traders also talk about the dampened soil, which hampers the harvest of green chillis. Earlier, immediately after Eid-ul-Adha, prices of kitchen items increased on similar grounds. Weather condition or public holiday for Durga Puja that the traders mention as a contributing factor to supply disruption leading to price increase is an annual event. It only suggests that traders use every excuse to arbitrarily increase goods price while the government fails to accurately forecast seasonal demand and supply and take actions accordingly. The commerce ministry should have made intervention early enough to ensure market stability.
In an already struggling economy, price instability on the kitchen market made the survival of fixed- and low-income people harder. With protein items increasingly becoming dearer, people usually rely on vegetables and broilers, but they, too, are now beyond the means of many. A number of research have indicated how food inflation has impacted people’s food intake and nutritional inequality. In August, the Power and Participation Research Centre estimated that poverty has increased sharply to 27.93 per cent, up from 18.7 per cent in 2022. In December 2024, the Research and Policy Integration for Development found that high inflation for two years had pushed at least 78 lakh people into poverty, with 38 lakh of them slipping into extreme poverty. The murder and suicide of four of a farmer’s family depicts a grim reality of silent hunger and extreme poverty. The farmer, his wife and their two children were found dead in their house at Paba in Rajshahi on August 15. The police suspected that it was a case of murder and suicide driven by debt and hunger. The event in Rajshahi is not isolated. The Multidimensional Poverty Index, released by the General Economics Division in July, said that one in four people were poor and about 3.98 crore individuals suffered multidimensional poverty.
The government must, therefore, take early steps to ensure price stability on the kitchen market. It must also improve its market monitoring mechanism so that unscrupulous traders cannot exploit weather conditions for high profits. And, the government must address income inequality to arrest the growth of extreme poverty.
