Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
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Thursday | 16 January 2025 | Epaper

High prices of daily commodities and commoners’ sufferings

Published : Thursday, 9 June, 2022 at 12:00 AM  Count : 1322
Md Momtazur Rahman
When people started returning to normal life after Corona, suddenly the prices of daily necessities started rising in Bangladesh. To begin with, the cooking oil market has been unstable since the last month. Even in the paddy season, the price of rice has gone up again.

Not only the prices of rice and edible oil, but the prices of all consumer goods, such as vegetables, eggs, bananas, fish, meat, grains, soap, toothpaste, detergents, bread, bread, etc., including daily necessities, are still rising at an unusual rate. The consumers are helpless and they are unable to buy necessary goods.

The country's inflation rate is 6.22%. It is true that inflation rate is high in many countries. The true story is that the incomes of our common people have not increased; rather the prices of all commodities have increased at unbearable rates.

The day labourers, the lower middle classes with fixed incomes are badly affected. The middle classes are not fine with the increased prices of daily commodities.

My driver said, few days back, "Sir, I cannot bear my family expenses and the prices of rice and oil are very high". Besides the upper classes in this society, most of the commoners are suffering.

I watched a report on a TV, two days back. According to the report, a member of a middle class family said, "I am unable to bear our daily expenses and the gas price will be high".

In the meantime, the government has taken institutional steps to increase the price of gas and oil. The main excuse of the government for increasing the price of gas and electricity is the increase in the price of fuel oil in the international market.

As a result, if the price of gas and electricity is not increased, the government subsidy will have to be increased. The Minister of State for Power and Energy said, "The price of fuel oil is rising in the world market. We have to move towards price adjustment". The statement may favor the reality.  

The government has to arrange its rules in various ways. Sometimes the market has to be regulated by regulation or policy. Needless to say, despite many initiatives taken over the years, the government-run Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) has never been able to stand on a solid footing.

On the contrary, we see the government, through its administration, is trying to stop market irregularities by imposing various magisterial measures on the margins of the market in times of crisis.

Needless to say, the Russian-Ukraine war has given a new impetus to the whole world situation. In particular, the war has put a strain on the fuel oil market. As the price of fuel oil has become more volatile, the prices of food items have gone up in the international market and the cost of transportation has also gone up.

But before the crisis, the prices of all kinds of products and services have increased in the market of Bangladesh. We always hear that various syndicates are the reason for increasing prices of necessary commodities. We have not seen so far that any culprit has been brought under law.

A large section of the population has not yet fully recovered from Corona's blow. The day labourers, the working class people, the rickshaw pullers, the workers, the low-income people, and the middle-income people - all are in dire straits, suddenly under the pressure of this rising market price.

Literally, people's confidence has risen to the minimum means to continue the cost of living.

We listen to various talks of businessmen and policy makers; it seems that there is a great lack of coordination between these two extremes. There is no institutional arrangement of these two groups.

The government must form a high powered market monitoring cell comprising the members from all ministries so that the cell can oversee all activities of sub or regional level monitoring teams across the country.


In addition the law enforcing agencies must keep their eyes on the commodity markets though the officials of the National Consumer Rights Protection, along with the law enforcers, are monitoring the markets in Dhaka and Chittagong.

It seems to me that this attempt is in isolation. It does not work, properly. A country-wide monitoring needs to minimize the prices of goods in the markets.
Md Momtazur Rahman, PhD,
Professor of English at
IUBAT-International University of Business Agriculture and Technology









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