Food prices in Bangladesh went up a lot in April

Food prices in Bangladesh went up a lot in April, reaching the highest point in five months. The government and the central bank tried to control these high prices, but it hasn’t worked yet. This makes things harder for people with low incomes and the poor because their buying power has been going down for the past two years.

According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the cost of food increased by 35 basis points to 10.22 percent last month, compared to 9.87 percent in March. This is the first time in five months that food prices have gone into double digits.

However, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures how much prices change over time for a group of goods and services, went down slightly by seven basis points to 9.74 percent in April. In March, it was 9.81 percent.

Non-food prices went down by 30 basis points to 9.34 percent.

Inflation stayed high, even though people hoped the government would do something about it when it started work in January. But it’s been four months since then, and there’s been no improvement.

Selim Raihan, an economics professor at the University of Dhaka, said, “We’re not seeing much action being taken.”

He mentioned that high inflation has been a problem for a while. But now, there’s even more worry about poor people’s food security because prices are going up, and their incomes aren’t keeping pace.

Dealing with high inflation should have been a big focus for the government, but it seems like everyone’s not working together on it.

He talked about how prices for eggs and meat shot up suddenly.

In Bangladesh, inflation started because of problems with getting goods because of Covid-19 and the war between Russia and Ukraine.

In 2022, while prices around the world started to go down, Bangladesh had big problems with its money and payments, which made the taka lose value a lot.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says half of the big increase in inflation last year was because the taka lost so much value.

The Bangladesh Bank said in January that the prices of energy and other things going up, along with problems in how goods are sold, also made inflation worse.

In the last two years, the taka has lost about 35 percent of its value because Bangladesh doesn’t have as much foreign money saved anymore.

The lending rates changed to be more based on the market, and the overnight repurchase agreement rate went up. The taka’s value dropped by 6 percent because of the crawling peg introduced by the central bank.

Prof Raihan, who is also the executive director of the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling, said it will take time for the new plans to work.

“We would have done better if we started these measures earlier,” he said.

According to the economist, food prices have gone up globally, which means countries like Bangladesh, which rely on imports, have to pay more for them. Also, the taxes haven’t been adjusted enough to help reduce the impact of these rising prices.

“There are problems in the market, and only a few companies import goods, so there’s not enough competition.”

Bangladesh is facing more trouble because its foreign exchange reserves are decreasing. Since the reserves aren’t getting better, the IMF has significantly lowered the requirement for the fourth installment of the $4.7 billion loans.

Read more: Heavy rain is causing floods again in southern Brazil