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Potato sold for Tk 45-50 a kilogram on city markets on Monday as traders flouted the commodity price set by the Department of Agricultural Marketing.
Retailers said that without ensuring that the commodity was sold at government-set prices at the cold storage and wholesale levels, it would not possible to bring down the price on kitchen markets.
The government set the maximum retail price of potato at Tk 35 a kg for the second time on October 19.
Following a meeting with the traders and cold storage owners, they also set the maximum wholesale price of potato at Tk 30 per kg and the cold storage gate price at Tk 27 per kg.
On October 7, the department fixed the maximum retail price of the item at Tk 30 a kg in the first round to check the price spiral when it was retailing for Tk 40-Tk 45 per kg.
In the first round, the department set the wholesale price of potato at Tk 25 per kg and the cold storage gate price at Tk 23 a kg.
Potato was not traded for a single day at the government-set prices on the market.
Traders even stopped selling the commodity to protest against the government move of setting minimum prices following which potato prices shot up to Tk 60 a kg on city markets.
Against the backdrop of the unusual price hike, the government held a meeting with traders and increased the retail price to Tk 35 a kg from Tk 30 a kg.
Despite increasing the prices at the cold storage, wholesale and retail levels, traders did not comply with the government’s decision and continued to sell the commodity at higher prices.
Retailers said that it would not possible to sell potato at Tk 35 a kg as the wholesale price of the item in the city was still higher that the price set.
Traders started increasing the prices of potato from the first week of this month on the pretext of off-seasonal supply shortage.
On October 21, the state-owned Trading Corporation of Bangladesh under the commerce ministry began open market sale of potato at the rate of Tk 25 a kg but the move failed to have any impact on the market.
(NA)
