The flour price at consumers' end is yet to match the price plunge the essential commodity has posted at farm and wholesale levels over the past one month.
According to market watchers and consumer rights activists, excessive profiteering by retailers has been depriving consumers of getting benefitted from the sharp price decline of the country's second major staple food at primary sources.
On Tuesday, New Age found a two-kilogram packet of coarse flour of the popular brands was being retailed for Tk 66 to Tk 68, down by Tk 1 or 2 per cent per kilo over the past couple of weeks.
But the price of wheat has nosedived by Tk 120 to Tk 150 per maund (37.3kg) or Tk 3.2 to Tk 4 per kg over the past four/five weeks, said wholesalers in Narayanganj and Chittagong.
On Narayanganj wholesale market, fine-grade Canadian wheat was being sold on Tuesday for Tk 940 to Tk 950 a maund and the inferior-grade Black Sea and South American varieties for Tk 740 and Tk 760 per maund respectively.
The country's annual demand for the grain ranges between three million and five million tonnes, at least two-thirds of which is met with imported wheat.
The wheat prices started to mark a downward curve since the end of March with domestic wheat-harvesting coming into full swing, said Abul Hashem, a trader at Thakurgaon, on Tuesday.
Another wheat trader, Ali Akbar of Khatunganj, said the price of wheat would fall further as the latest crop across the globe, including India, was good and the forthcoming ones were also predicted to be plentiful, which meant its import cost would continue to slide in the foreseeable future.
Emdadul Hauqe, a senior member of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh, said wheeling and dealing in the retail market had for long been a common malpractice. 'But all the subsequent governments have failed to eliminate this distortion in the supply chain, leaving the consumers unprotected,' he added.
Food minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque told New Age in last week that as flour prices remained unjustifiably high on the retail market, the government was going to launch an open market sales programme of the major staple.
'We have decided to sell flour in addition to rice at OMS outlets as the price of flour is not decreasing on the local market, although wheat prices have fallen significantly on the global market,' he said.
The government has decided to sell flour at Tk 20 per kilo at OMS outlets.
Source: New Age
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