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Food aid flow on new low

REAZ AHMAD
Food aid flow dipped to a new low with barely two lakh metric tons (MT) of grains received during the first 10 months of ongoing fiscal -- just half the annual projection.
Officials fear the target would not be fulfilled in the next two months as the food aid pipeline does not promise much.
In May and June, around 22,000 MT of grains may be available from the US, the largest bilateral food donor to Bangladesh.
Officials noted that with the US diverting at least 64,000 MT of its committed food aid from Bangladesh to some of the drought-affected African countries, the country now faces an awkward food security situation.
A US announcement three days ago that it would make available an additional 25,000 MT of food aid for Bangladesh came as a solace.
After the yield loss in last aman, boro prospect also looks uncertain as seedlings suffered badly due to a prolonged cold spell and foggy weather last winter.
The government sold some four lakh MT of grains from public granaries under a subsidised open market sale (OMS) programme to offset rice price hike during the last Ramadan.
As a result, the current stock at the public silos stands a little over five lakh MT, more than three lakh MT down from the government-set minimum food
security level of 8.5 lakh MT.
As food aid prospect dulls and demand remains high, imports of rice and wheat by the private sector surged. Rice import swelled five times to 5.97 lakh MT during the first eight months of the current fiscal over the last fiscal's 1.18 lakh MT.
The government also plans to buy at least one lakh MT of grains through tender.
Earlier, the government dropped its idea to import grains on the ground that local purchase would save costs and benefit the private importers.
After attaining "food self-sufficiency", there was no commercial grains import by the government since 2000.
According to the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU) of the government, Bangladesh received around five lakh MT of food aid in 2001-02 and 200001 while the volume was as high as 871,000 MT in 1999-2000 and 12,28,000 in 199899. In late 1980s, Bangladesh used to receive 13 to 15 lakh MT of food aid annually.
According to official statistics, Bangladesh received only 1.33 lakh MT of grains during the first half of the current fiscal against the projection of four lakh MT. The food aid flow eventually rose to around two lakh MT till yesterday.
The projected volume is the lowest in the last one and a half decades.