Govt mulls further measures to control price of essentials: PM Hasina

Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday said her government mulls further steps to bring down prices of daily essentials to keep them at a tolerable level of the ordinary consumers.

“Price of essentials has gone up. I belief, it is urgently need to take more measures to bring down the price of essentials to tolerable level,” she said.

The prime minister was presiding over the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) meeting joining virtually from her official residence, Gonobhaban.

The cabinet members were present at the meeting at NEC conference room in city.

The prime minister expressed her apprehension that disastrous incidents might be organised in the country as conspiracy is usually hatched here whenever any move is taken to change the fate of the masses.

She asked all to remain alert.

Sheikh Hasina also said they can realise people’s sufferings due to fresh surge of essentials prices due to the global situation.

“I know price of daily essentials has increased due to recent hike in fuel price for the global situation. The lower, lower middle, middle and fixed income groups’ people are suffering from essentials price hike. We can realise that,” she added.

To ease the public sufferings, the prime minister said her government is going to sell rice at Tk 15 per kilogram (from 1 September) to 5 million families alongside taking measures to sell essentials in a fixed price to 10 million families through family cards.

“We believe we have to take some more measures so the commoners will not suffer from price hike. We are doing politics for the people and we feel hurt if they go through pain,” she continued.

The prime minister said the price of essentials has shown increasing trend across the globe due to the Russia-Ukraine war, sanctions and counter sanctions alongside the ongoing Coronavirus situation.

“Everything has gone out of our purchasing capacity after imposing sanctions (due to disruption of supplying food), though we have the ability of purchasing,” she said.

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