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Government decides to import 10 lakh tonnes of rice Rice Imports
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Government decides to import 10 lakh tonnes of rice

Bangladesh Live News | @banglalivenews | 12 Jul 2021, 08:15 pm

Dhaka, July 12: The government has decided to privately import 10 lakh tonnes of boiled rice to control the rising rice market. This information has been revealed from the minutes of the online exchange meeting on the overall management of food grains. Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder presided over the function.

It was decided at the meeting that initially necessary steps would have to be taken to import 1 million tonnes of rice at the private level at 25 per cent import duty. In the interest of keeping the market price stable, the Ministry of Food will be able to increase or decrease this amount if necessary.

At the meeting, the food minister said the demand for coarse rice has increased as the use of coarse rice has decreased. If non-basmati siddha / atap fine rice is imported privately, then the market price will be somewhat controlled.

Agriculture Minister Md Abdur Razzak said the price of paddy has been fixed at Tk 1,080 per maund (37.4 kilograms) this time. In this the farmer got a fair price because the production cost per farmer was not more than Tk 700 to Tk 750. Therefore, if it is imported, the farmer will not be harmed in any way. The price of rice has gone up even after the Boro rice harvest, so it is necessary to import rice privately along with government imports in the previous continuity.

At the meeting, Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi suggested reducing the import duty to control the rice market and importing a certain amount of rice privately.

Food Secretary Moshammat Nazmanara Khanum said that according to the policy, 10 lakh tonnes of food grains have to be stored. In this case, about 5 lakh tons will be collected through internal collection and about 5 lakh tons will be collected through foreign collection. Which is not enough to control the market. Providing fair price of paddy to the farmers, as well as market control requires import at private level.

Mesbahul Islam, senior secretary at the agriculture ministry, said, "According to the Department of Agricultural Extension and Bangladesh Rice Research Institute, the price of rice is still high even after 2.08 crore tonnes of Boro paddy were produced. If we want to know the reason for the increase in the price of rice, we need to know the actual demand for food grains and non-human food grains in the human sector."