Price spike forces poor to cut down on food intake
The exorbitant price hike of essential commodities has forced a large percentage
of the country's low-income families to cut down on their food intake.
A number of people who live hand-to-mouth and low-income servicemen of Dhaka,
Rajshahi, Savar, Jamalpur, Mymensingh, Habiganj, Nilphamari, and Chapainawabganj
said they had failed to increase their income to match the price spiral of
essential commodities and so were forced to cut down on their food intake.
'The way the prices of essential commodities have gone up in the past one
year, there is a possibility of food intake adjustment by the very low-income
group people,' Centre for Policy Dialogue executive director Mustafizur Rahman
told New Age on Saturday.
He said the purchasing capacity of the low-income group people had reduced due
to the price spiral of essential commodities, which sometimes forced them to cut
down on food intake as they spent 60 to 80 per cent of their income on food.
A government survey has revealed that at least 39.80 per cent of the households
in the country still live in food insecurity. The survey report also says
members of most of those households often go without food or have to borrow to
meet their want of food. The Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics conducted the
Welfare Monitoring Survey in March 2009, the report of which was released in May
last year.
The Consumers Association of Bangladesh in a survey report released in December
2010 said low-income families were forced to reduce food consumption by more
than one-fifth.'We have no alternative to reducing food intake as we spend only a small and
fixed amount of money for clothing and house rent,' said Abdus Samad, a
resident of Balubagaban village in Chapainawabganj town. He has to run a
six-member family with a fixed income of Tk 250 a day. He pays a Tk 1,200 house
rent a month.
Abdus Samad said the income of his family had increased by only Tk 80 per day
over the past three years, while the expenditure had nearly doubled over the
same period.
Like Samad, a good number of people who used to be above the poverty line feel
the pinch of the price spike of essential commodities.Dhaka University Institute of Nutrition and Food Science director professor
Sagarmay Barua said it was a common coping pattern that people cut down on their
food intake when the prices of essentials went up and they failed to increase
their income. It creates a serious threat of producing nutrition deficiency, he
said.
The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on March 9, however, said in the parliament
that the people of Bangladesh were eating more food now as their average earning
had increased. 'Those who used to eat once a day are now eating twice and the
people who used to eat twice a day are now eating thrice,' she claimed.
A CAB study reveals that the price of rice has increased by 40 per cent a year.
The study also found that, on an average, the prices of major food items had
increased by 20.30 per cent in last year.
According to the market monitoring report of Trading Corporation of Bangladesh,
as on March 25, the retail price of coarse rice had increased by 30.19 per cent
in the past one year, that of flour, the second-most important essential food
item, by 46.81 per cent, and the prices of soya bean oil and palm oil by more
than 42 per cent and 48 per cent respectively, while the price of spices had
risen by more then 20 per cent on an average.
According to a budget implementation report released last week, the overall food
inflation soared to a 29-month high at 11.91 per cent in January this year. The
food price hike led food inflation to increase by 0.67 percentage points to
12.43 per cent in rural area and by 1.43 percentage points to 10.47 per cent in
urban areas in the month.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies research director Zaid Bakht said
the cost of living had gone up due to the price spiral of essential commodities
and affected the food consumption of the people living around the poverty line.
New Age correspondent in Nilphamari reported that most of the poor families in
the district were compelled to change their way of earning and food behaviour.
They engaged more members, whether women or children, for making some extra
income, took loans from NGOs and local usurers at high interest, sought seasonal
work, sold domestic animals and trees to cover food costs.
Tofazzal Hossain, 37, a rickshaw-puller of Singdoi village under Nilphamari
Sadar upazila, earns between Tk 180 and Tk 200 a day, which he said was not
enough to manage food for his six-member family.Tofazzal said, three to four years back, he could provide for his family without
much hardship. But, now he is at a loss about how to run his family.
He said sometimes he was unable to pull rickshaw and earn money due to illness.
In such a situation, he has to either take an instant loan from the local usurer
at a high interest or to sell a domestic animal or a tree. In recent years, the
sharp price spiral has forced him to take loans from different non-governmental
organisations as at present he has nothing left to sell.
He said in a sad voice that, due to the acute price hike, his family had never
eaten meat or fish in recent years except during the Eids.
Awal Miah, 54, an agricultural labourer of Danga Para village under the same
upazila, said he usually earned Tk 150 when work was available and sometimes
less than Tk 80 when there was hardly any work. He remains unemployed in most of
the months of the year. So, he tried to earn money by working as a seasonal
labourer in other districts and sometimes by selling traditional rice cakes or
boiled eggs.He also engaged his wife and children as domestic workers in others' homes to
earn some extra income.
According to the World Food Programme, 60 million people in Bangladesh still do
not have sufficient food to eat.New Age Correspondent in Habiganj reported that the prices of essential
commodities had been increasing by the day at the markets of the district,
causing great financial hardships for the people, especially the people of
low-income groups and the middle class.
http://newagebd.com/newspaper1/frontpage/13122.html
__._,_.___
