In an effort to provide essential food items at lower prices, the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) on Thursday launched an initiative to sell agricultural products directly from trucks.
This initiative is aimed at offering consumers an affordable alternative to regular market prices.
The variety of vegetables and food items, including eggs, bitter gourd, bottle gourd, pointed gourd, onions, papaya, sweet pumpkin and radish, are available for purchase. These products are being sold at significantly lower prices compared to regular market rates, attracting large numbers of buyers.
Long queues were formed as consumers wait to purchase these essential items at reduced prices. The initiative comes at a time when inflation and high market prices continue to challenge household budgets.
Earlier on Wednesday, the TCB announced that essential items like edible oil, lentil alongside rice provided by the Directorate General
of Food will be sold among general consumers at subsidised rates through 50 trucks in Dhaka metropolis and 20 trucks in Chattogram metropolis while such operations will continue until Novembe 30r.
Under this initiative, each consumer can buy maximum 2 litres of edible oil at Tk100 per litre, 2kg of lentil at Tk60 per kg and 5kg of rice at Tk30 per kg.
Asif Mahmud Shojib Bhuyain, interim government’s adviser on the Ministry of Labour and Employment and the Ministry of Youth and Sports; inaugurated the operations of truck sale by the state-run Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) at Dakhshin Begunbari (Dipikar Mor), Tejgaon Industrial Area in the capital.
He said that the government would take tougher action to break syndicate aimed at keeping the commodities price stable.
Noting that prices of commodities increase due to the syndicate and middlemen, he said that the government had been working in all possible means by giving priority to break syndicate in the long-term.
“From big cities to local level, government task force concerned has been working to this end,” he added.
Mentioning that it is crucial to reduce the dominance of the middlemen from producers or farmers to consumer level, the Adviser said that the government would extend all sorts of cooperation to those private enterprises, who are doing social business by reaching commodities to the consumers from the entrepreneurs, said a press release.
He said that the government is also considering launching alternate agriculture market as part of its long-term plan to stop the price hike of commodities where the farmers could reach their products to the markets.
