Government warehouses hold more rice and wheat than in years, but less of it is reaching poor people at low prices. According to the Ministry of Food, the government now holds a little over 2.1 million tonnes of grain, about 1.8 million tonnes of rice and 300,000 tonnes of wheat. In June 2024 the stock was 1.47 million tonnes, so it is now about 600,000 tonnes higher.
In the four months from July to October of the 2026-27 fiscal year, however, 1.104 million tonnes of grain were distributed, 67,000 tonnes less than in the same period a year earlier. Allocations to open market sales (OMS) in that time were about 268,000 tonnes of rice and wheat, down 93,000 tonnes or 26 percent.
Md Jamal Hossain, additional director general of the Directorate of Food, told Prothom Alo that distribution fell because there was no rice allocation for the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) in the first four months of the fiscal year. From November the finance ministry has allocated 300,000 tonnes of rice to TCB. TCB spokesman Shahadat Hossain said that after four months of letters, the agency hopes to receive the rice this month.
The price gap with the market is wide. In Dhaka the cheapest coarse rice costs Tk 50 a kilogram and slightly better coarse rice Tk 55; OMS rice sells at Tk 30. Loose flour costs Tk 48-50 against Tk 24 at OMS. Under the largest scheme, the food-friendly programme, 55 lakh people get 30 kilograms of rice a month at Tk 15 for six months a year, but only cardholders qualify.
A World Food Programme (WFP) report of 22 September said the number of people at risk of acute food insecurity in Bangladesh between September and December could reach 18.1 million, 2.8 million more than at the start of the year, citing inflation, falling purchasing power, flood damage to farming and child malnutrition. A 2025 survey by the Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) found that food takes about 55 percent of a household's monthly spending.
Sufia Begum, 45, of Arambagh slum in Rupnagar, Mirpur, said her TCB card was cancelled and the government rice and flour truck no longer comes to the slum. Afia Begum of Gol Pahar slum in Chattogram gets 5 kilograms of OMS rice a month, but it is atap (sun-dried) rice; coarse rice outside costs Tk 55-60 a kilogram.
Economist Selim Raihan said that in a crisis poor people cut food spending and skip or halve meals, and not everyone gets government help, so low-price food distribution should be increased.
Photo: Press Information Department / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
Source: Prothom Alo
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