Prime minister Sheikh Hasina at a press conference on Tuesday said she will ask the commerce minister Tipu Munshi about his statement on the syndicate on essential commodities.
However, when commerce minister Tipu Munshi was asked about it on Wednesday, he said, “The prime minister said this, I didn’t. Under what circumstance she said this and what she meant by it, I don’t know.”
He further said, “After the prime minister’s press conference I was with her for two hours, but we didn’t speak on the matter.”
The minister told reporters after a meeting with the visiting US-Bangladesh Business Council.
Tipu Munshi said, “Syndicate has a vast meaning. For example, thousands of people in the country are involved in the egg business. It’s not that they don’t take advantages, they do. But the government is trying to keep the price at a tolerable level.”
“We don’t want to use the threat of cases and jail terms, we want to solve this problem through discussion. If the vendors are subjected to cases and jail, they might shut their businesses, which will only worsen the people’s suffering. If the price of eggs increases, we have decided we will import eggs if required to keep the supply normal,” he said.
He further said that when prices of necessities get hiked up, the government tries to control the prices through the Directorate of National Consumers' Right Protection.
But he said that they don’t have enough people in the workforce and hence it’s not possible to ensure a hundred per cent of monitoring.
The minister was given the example of neighbouring country Sri Lanka, which has bounced back from a debilitating economic crisis and has successfully controlled inflation of prices. If Sri Lanka could do it, why can’t Bangladesh, he was asked.
Tipu Munshi replied, “Sri Lanka and our situation is different. A big avenue of their economy is tourism, which they have revived successfully. Our country is bigger, there are many problems, but we are trying continuously.
"The prime minister herself has said, in this situation we need to practice austerity," the minister quoted the prime minister as saying .”
The minister further said, the ministry of livestock has fixed the rate of eggs and the commerce ministry is trying to ensure that the vendors sell eggs at the fixed rate.
He also said that price inflation is affecting people all over the world, saying that people in the UK are permitted to purchase only a certain number of tomatoes. Bangladesh is also feeling the pinch and it will take some time to solve the problem.
Tipu Munshi also said, India and Bangladesh are not comparable in every way. In India, sugar is cheaper, they have a surplus of sugar, which they export. Bangladesh has to import 99 per cent of its sugar consumption.