The government wants to increase the security stock of food grains, the minimum quantity kept in public warehouses to deal with national crises and ensure people's food security.

The resetting of the security stock is due to come up at a meeting of the Food Planning and Monitoring Committee (FPMC) on Thursday 6 August. The FPMC chair, Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed, and other members will decide what the security stock should be in future.

At present the security stock of rice and wheat combined is 13.5 lakh metric tonnes.

According to food ministry sources, a proposal will be placed before the FPMC to raise the security stock by at least another five lakh tonnes. The figure is not fixed, but the stock could be set at between 18 lakh and 18.5 lakh tonnes. The FPMC will finalise it after analysing current data on food grain production, imports and distribution.

The government keeps a security stock mainly to ensure people's food security and to deal with emergencies, so that food can be distributed to affected people during floods, droughts, cyclones or other natural disasters. The stocks are also used to keep food prices stable, to prevent shortages and famine when production falls, and to run government food distribution programmes.

When a country's overall food security stock rises, its capacity to store and distribute food rises too, widening the reach of social protection programmes.

Asked about the security stock, Mohammad Kamrul Islam Chowdhury, director general of the Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU), told Jago News that the FPMC last raised it to 13.5 lakh metric tonnes at a meeting in 2022. "Since then the country's production, demand and distribution, as well as the number of beneficiaries in government distribution programmes, have increased. That is why we are proposing a higher security stock. But the committee will finalise the next level," he said.

The Directorate General of Food handles the storage, preservation and distribution of public food grains. Moniruzzaman, director of its procurement division, told Jago News that the public food grain stock situation is very good. "We have broken every past stock record, and the stock will rise further once the Boro procurement ends," he said. "Government distribution is also growing, and our procurement capacity has increased, so raising the security stock is relevant."

According to the Directorate General of Food, the country currently holds 23.49 lakh metric tonnes of food: 19.66 lakh tonnes of rice, 2.80 lakh tonnes of wheat and 1.52 lakh tonnes of paddy.

Anwar Faruque, a former agriculture secretary and agriculture expert, told Jago News that the security stock was last set four years ago and the population has naturally grown since then. "Prices are rising in the country, and social protection for ordinary people needs to be expanded. If the security stock rises, distribution will rise. It is a good initiative," he said.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.