No matter how much the government claims the country to be self-sufficient in food, a significant amount of rice and wheat have to be imported every year. If required, the government will import rice and no one should have any objection to that.
But, why do ministers and secretaries along with their groups have to go on foreign tours to buy that rice? And, why does the minister himself have to go abroad to discuss the procurement of rice? That too at such a time when the country is going through severe dollar crisis.
On last Tuesday, the headline on the last page of Prothom Alo was ‘Minister, secy visit three countries amid dollar crisis to procure rice’.
A six-membered delegation including food minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder, food secretary Md Ismiel Hossain and director general of food Md Shakhawat Hossain visited Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia.
The tri-country tour started with them setting off to Cambodia on 22 November though there’s a directive that the minister and secretary must not travel abroad together.
That order, sent from the prime minister’s office on 19 June 2011, said the minister and secretary of the same ministry must avoid travelling abroad together.
Being on this foreign tour, the food secretary couldn’t attend prime minister’s meeting with the secretaries on Sunday.
It was stated in the meeting that more than 1.6 million tonnes of rice and wheat are stored in the government warehouses. Yet, the price of rice is on the increase because of the mill owners’ and big traders’ trickery.
According to newspaper reports, the cost of the minister, secretary and other officials visiting in Vietnam will be borne by the government of that country. However, the cost of the Cambodia and Thailand tours will have to be borne by the Bangladesh government, indeed.
There is a deep mystery behind Vietnam bearing the cost of Bangladeshi representatives travelling there.
Bangladesh has made a contract of buying 230,000 tonnes of rice from Vietnam at a cost of USD 521 for per tonne of parboiled rice and USD 494 for per tonne of 'atap' rice.
However, this rice could have been bought for a price lot lower than that from Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, India or Pakistan.
Since the Vietnam government is paying for the minister-secretary’s tour, it’s quite normal to raise questions about what was the driving force behind buying rice at a higher price from there.
Where, the price for per tonne of rice in the mentioned countries is more or less USD 400 dollars, what can be the logic behind purchasing rice from Vietnam paying about USD 100 more on per tonne.
Vietnam has taken Bangladeshi minister and secretary on a tour to Hanoi on their own cost to increase assistance in the agricultural sector, that’s great.
But, that assistance doesn’t mean that we have to buy rice from them at a higher price than the international market price.
Though the production of rice in the country has increased, it’s lower than required. In that case, we are bound to import rice from abroad. Even there are scopes of bargaining about the price for there being several sources to import the rice.
But, why did the minister and secretary of the food ministry buy rice at higher price from Vietnam without utilising that opportunity? Is this the repayment of travelling Vietnam for free?
Where there’s a strict restriction on government officials going for tours, why should the common people of the country take the liability of this pleasure visit on them? We demand explanations from the minister and secretary of food ministry on this.