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Former minister stresses market watchdog

Staff Correspondent, ctg
An independent watchdog is required to control soaring essential commodity prices and ensure moderate living standards, said former commerce minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury yesterday.
Chowdhury also suggested engaging economic experts in place of civil servants in foreign embassies to help expand and promote business abroad.
Chowdhury, Chittagong City BNP convener, was speaking at a meeting at his Mehedibagh home in Chittagong.
He said a reactivation of the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) to check monopoly and control the market was not possible, as spot buying guided the international market.
TCB's long process of
procurement by bidding hardly draws the interest of exporters abroad, he added.
Building buffer stocks and releasing essential commodities in times of crisis can check retail and wholesale markets, Chowdhury said. "That was not possible as essential commodities are mostly perishable and TCB deals only with four such items.”
Chowdhury stressed the formation of an independent watchdog to protect consumer interests. "Such a body could fix a fair price of all commodities after monitoring both local and international markets and help strictly implement the price," said Chowdhury.
Such a body also should have the authority to take punitive measures and cancel trade licences to defuse any move to destabilise the local market, the
former minister said.
Chowdhury also emphasised engaging economic experts in the country's embassies abroad. Deployment of noncommercial or political people in those places can hardly promote business or expand the market abroad, he said.
He stressed government support to the garments and shipbuilding sector in Bangladesh to accelerate economic growth.
About Chittagong port, Chowdhury said a trade union is a constitutional and fundamental right of workers.
He also emphasised developing the Asian Highway through Chittagong. The international transit route excluding Chittagong will simply be an India-to-India transit route through Bangladesh.