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Recent rice price hike won’t affect the poor

Says food minister

Star Business Report
The existing price of rice, which rose by Tk 2 per kg recently, will not affect the livelihood of the common people in the long run, as the government has enough stocks of the staple, said the food and disaster management ministeryesterday.
“The recent price hike was caused by the transportation problem on the occasion of Eid and Durga Puja holidays. As the situation is becoming normal now, we hope the market condition to improve," said Abdur Razzaque.
“The government is closely monitoring the market and will do everything to keep rice price within the reach of common people," he added.
He was speaking at a seminar on Extreme Poverty1 and Graduation Dynamics jointly organised by Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) and Brae Development Institute (BDI) in Dhaka.
Terming the price rise as expected’, Razzaque said the price hike of rice in many cases is beneficial to the farmers. At the same time, tlie government is ready to launch various social safety
net programmes to check further rise in price by the traders.
"If the traders don't lower the price, we will start offering rice through Open Market Sale (OMS). We are flso ready to start programmes like Vulnerable Group Feeding (VGF), Test Relief (TR) and Kabikha (food for work programme) to keep the market stable with our stocks of 12 lakh tonnes of rice," said the minister.
“Under the social safety net programmes, we are planning to introduce several income generating schemes for the hardcore poor in the Sidr-, Aila- and monga-affected areas,” he said.
The first phase of this kind of programme will start from October 15, he added.
Razzaque also said the government is trying hard to widen its social safety net and reach the country's 25 percent extreme poor, of whose 13 percent are still not addressed.
He said the government has already increased the budget for social safety net programmes by cutting funds from the development budget. The government has so far distributed 21 lakh tonnes of rice among the extreme poor
in the vulnerable areas.
In his keynote paper titled Consolidating Nets, Promoting Ladders: Scaling up the Poverty Agenda, Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman of PPRC, said the government should emphasise creating 'safety ladders' to reduce poverty.
"Along with widening the social safety net, the government should create safety ladders for the extreme poor areas. Safety ladders include economic programme through education and training programme mainly for the youth of those areas,” he said.
When people of those areas will get proper education and training, they will be able to get jobs in both local and international markets, he said.
"And eventually this will help the government cut poverty and achieve sustainable development."
Rahman stressed reconstructing dams in the coastal areas to reduce risks of flood erosion, one of the major causes for poverty.
Prof Syed M Hashemi, director of BDI, and Prof David Hulme, director of Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester, were also present at the seminar.