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Sunday November 13, 2022 08:15 Last updated on: Sunday November 13, 2022 12:14 PM
Workers are back at work, here packing imported wheat into sacks before they are lifted off the ship at Charpara Ghat in Chattogram yesterday. The strike imposed by the tanker workers was called off after 14 hours on Friday evening when the Chittagong Port Authority assured the workers to meet one of their demands – cancellation of the lease of the ghat used by the workers. Photo: Rajib Raihan
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Workers are back at work, here packing imported wheat into sacks before they are lifted off the ship at Charpara Ghat in Chattogram yesterday. The strike imposed by the tanker workers was called off after 14 hours on Friday evening when the Chittagong Port Authority assured the workers to meet one of their demands – cancellation of the lease of the ghat used by the workers. Photo: Rajib Raihan
With the price of wheat flour crossing Tk 60 per kilogram (kg) at the end of last week, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) kept the price warning level for the second most consumed wheat at “high” in Bangladesh.
November is the third month in a row that the UN agency maintains its warning above for the country as the price of wheat flour edged up to Tk 54.65 per kg in the city of Dhaka in October this year, rising from Tk 50.10 in September.
For all the latest news, follow The Daily Star’s Google News channel. FAO said the price of wheat flour in October was almost 80 percent above its annual level.
“High domestic prices usually reflect slow imports and high transportation costs due to rising fuel prices,” he said in the monthly Food Price Monitoring and Analysis released on Friday.
Bangladesh is the only Asian country for which the FAO has issued a high price warning level this month. Of the seven countries facing high price warnings, five are in Africa while Columbia is the only country in the Americas, according to the UN agency.
Yesterday, the retail price of loose wheat flour, locally known as Atta, was Tk 60-62 per kg in Dhaka, which was 8 percent higher than a month ago, according to data from the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh.
The price of wheat flour, which was Tk 34 per kg in the capital in January this year, began to rise after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in the third week of February.
Later in May, India banned the shipment of wheat containing its domestic price, which fueled the price in Bangladesh as the neighboring country has been the main source of wheat in recent years.
Wheat imports fell to a six-year low in the 2021-22 fiscal year amid a lack of availability while many consumers cut consumption after being hit by wheat prices.
Public and private importers brought in 40 lakh tonnes of wheat in the last fiscal, down 25 percent year-on-year as businesses cut imports drastically, food ministry data showed.
Between July 1 and October 6 of the fiscal year starting from July 2022, Bangladesh’s wheat imports fell 4 percent year-on-year to 384,000 tons, he said.
Earlier this month, the US Department of Agriculture, in its Wheat and Forage Update on Bangladesh, predicted that wheat consumption in the country could drop 10 percent to 69 lakh tonnes in the 2022-23 marketing year as market prices are high and wheat supply is low. and wheat flour that reduces consumer demand.
The US agency also cut its forecast of Bangladesh’s wheat imports by 21 percent year-on-year to 55 lakh tonnes for the same year.
Bangladesh produces roughly 10 lakh tonnes of wheat and imports the rest for domestic consumption.
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