Edible oil prices are not rising at the moment

AHM Shafiquzzaman, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce (Import and Domestic Trade), said that the price of edible oil is not increasing at present.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the committee formed on Thursday (January 8) to revise the pricing system of essential commodities (sugar and edible oil) and update the expenditure statement.

The meeting was chaired by AHM Shafiquzzaman, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Commerce (Import Internal Trade). He told reporters at the end of the meeting.

Earlier, the Bangladesh Vegetable Oil Refiners and Vegetable Manufacturers Association had proposed to increase the price of soybean oil by Tk 6 per liter citing increase in import cost. At the same time, it has been proposed to increase the price of palm oil. Recently, the Commerce Ministry was asked to increase the price of oil from January 6 with this proposal.

In this context, the Ministry of Commerce sent the matter to the Tariff Commission for verification and selection. In this context, the committee was formed in a meeting with the Refiners Association today to revise the existing pricing system of essential commodities (sugar and edible oil) and to update the expenditure statement.

At the end of the meeting, the Additional Secretary said that the Refinery Association has requested to increase the price of edible oil in the domestic market, citing the reasons for the increase in the price of edible oil in the international market. However, the government has not yet increased the price of edible oil. The decision will be taken later after sorting out the verification.

AHM Safiquzzaman said, "We are reviewing the pricing system of edible oil." Next Tuesday, the committee members will visit the factories of the big refinery companies. There they will review import costs, packaging costs and other costs. Then we will fix the pricing method. Then we will sit down and fix the price of oil.

Asked how much the price could go up, he said, "If the price goes up later, we have to fix the pricing system first." Then there is the matter of raising prices. The pricing system was done 10 years ago. I will review it. Next Tuesday we will sit down again after inspecting the factory and doing research.

Is there any demand of refinery association? In response to such a question, he said, they have a demand for price increase They have already applied. We will now sit down and talk to the government and decide.

Oil prices have fallen sharply in the international market. Asked about the rise in prices in the country, he said, "It is true that prices have come down in the international market, but it will take time to see the impact." We see two-and-a-half months. We fix the pricing method first, then the price increase. When the international market goes down a lot, we also adjust the price. We have reduced the price before.

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