POBNEWS24, Dhaka, Feb 19,2022: Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi has said that the price of edible oil in the world market has gone up by six hundred to thirteen hundred dollars per ton in the last one and a half years. “We have nothing to do if oil prices rise in the world market,” he said. The government can only sell products through TCB at low prices.
He said this while addressing a seminar titled ‘Rangpur Dialogue-Pledge for National Development: Education, Decent Employment, Gender Equality’ at Begum Rokeya Auditorium at RDRS premises in Rangpur on Saturday.
The Center for Policy Dialogue-CPD organized this dialogue in collaboration with Citizen-Sujan for Good Governance. CPD Joint Director (Dialogue and Outreach Avro Bhattacharya) presented the keynote address at the event.
The commerce minister said 90 per cent of edible oil was imported from abroad. Only ten percent is produced in our country. Ninety percent of these are brought to the country by traders. Oil prices have risen sharply in the countries from which we import oil, including Brazil and Malaysia. What can the government do here? Traders will no longer be able to sell oil at a loss.
“All we can do is sell products through TCB,” he said. We are doing so. With the month of Ramadan, we are thinking of giving oil, pulses and flour from TCB to one crore people. The Prime Minister is sincere about this.
Regarding the election manifesto, he said, the manifesto is a document. The government has acted according to this document and we have the will to do so. I will do more work in the future. However, I may not be able to do things as quickly as I needed to. We are waiting for the reduction of oil prices in the world market.
Earlier in his introductory speech, Sujan’s secretary Badiul Alam Majumder said that the election manifesto was an agreement. This is because when an election manifesto is issued by a party during an election, they give it in writing. I think the parties will be cautious when it comes to election manifestos. We have to think about the people of the country, we have to think about every region of the country.
He added that the country has not yet developed balanced. Especially Rangpur region is lagging behind in terms of development. The region has lagged behind in many ways since independence. So I think all parties should work for the development of this region without any discrimination.
