Prices of vegetables saw a fresh decline in the city markets bringing some sorts of relief to city dwellers, thanks to the government for beefing up market monitoring and supervision.
Prices of essential items such as rice, atta, flour, edible oil, sugar, and lentils were found stable in different markets in the city.
During a visit to different city markets, it was found that the prices of different vegetables were on falling trend over the last week.
Market sources said soaring prices of commodities are gradually becoming normal as the government has tightened its monitoring and supervision so that dishonest businesspeople cannot manipulate the prices in the market.
At the outset of the holy Ramadan, the unit price of most of the vegetables including cucumber, aubergine, pointed guard, yard long bean, okra, ladies finger and snake guard was on an average of Taka 80-90 per kg, which are now being sold at 50-60 per kg.
Onion is being sold at Taka 22-25 per kg against its earlier price of Taka 55-60 while per kg potato is being at Taka 20 in the city’s Nawabganj kitchen market on Saturday. Prices of tomatoes are also being sold at a cheaper price.
At the wholesale level, onion and potato are now being sold at Taka 17 and Taka 13 per kg. Price of eggplant came down sharply and per kg quality eggplant is being sold at Tk 65-75 in the city market.
At the beginning of Ramadan, price of per kg quality eggplant varied from Taka 100 to Taka 90.
“Huge amount of onion have already been imported from India and harvesting of local onion led to the drastic fall in the onion price,” said M Jahangir Hossen Molla, a wholesaler of Shah Ali School and College Market of Mirpur Section-1.
Even there is huge stock of onion in the market, so there is no chance of jumping up onion price again, said another retailer Anowar Mollah of city’s large grocery market Kawran Bazar.
The prices of some newly arrived summer vegetables were found higher but the prices of other vegetables remained at tolerable limit, said a vegetable seller Lokman Hossain of Mirpur Shah Ali Market.
“If there is no natural disaster in coming days, the price of most of the vegetables will further decline,” said another vegetable seller Jahangir Hossain of Shantinagar Bazar.
In addition to this, the prices of rice, atta, lentil, edible oil and sugar have remained stable—medium quality rice ‘paijam’ and BR-28 are now being sold at Taka 46 and Taka 48 while the fine quality miniket and nazir is being sold at Taka 65 and Taka 70 per kg respectively.
“The rice price will decline more in the coming days particularly after the month of Baishak as new harvest will arrive in the market,” said Mizan, a rice seller of Kawran Bazar.
Prices of all types of fishes were on rising trend in the markets as the price of one-kg size hilsa is Taka 1400-1500. The fish traders attributed the price hike of all types of fishes to imposition of ban on fishing by the government.
The government has imposed a ban on catching, selling, hoarding and transporting of hilsa for two months from March 1 in order to increase production.
Now beef is selling at Taka 680 per kg, and mutton at Taka 850-950 per kg while the price of local chicken is Taka 550 per kg.
