Commerce minister plans food traceability to find where prices rise

The government was going to introduce traceability for many food items to identify exactly at which stage, and by how much, prices rise between the farmer's field and the consumer's table, Commerce Minister Khandaker Abdul Muktadir said on Thursday, 30 July 2026. He was speaking as chief guest at a dialogue on "The food value chain: Bangladesh's market system, profits and intermediaries", organised by the private think tank Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) at the BRAC Centre Inn in Mohakhali, Dhaka.

According to the minister, the system would identify the causes of price increases at each step of production, transport, storage and marketing, so that unnecessary costs, extortion in goods transport and market inefficiency could be reduced. "If we can do that, we will be able to identify where the problem lies from start to finish," he said. The Codex Alimentarius Commission, the UN food standards body, defines traceability in its 2006 guidelines as the ability to follow the movement of a food through specified stages of production, processing and distribution.

The commerce minister said food inflation had stayed high for a long time partly because of high logistics costs. By his account, the global standard for logistics costs is 10 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), while in Bangladesh it is 16 per cent. According to Prothom Alo, he said inflation had fallen in other countries after Covid but not in Bangladesh, where it remained high at 9 to 9.5 per cent. Logistics and input costs must come down, he said.

As an example of farmers lacking accurate market information, he pointed to potatoes: "For two years we have produced more than one crore tonnes of potatoes. Two years ago farmers did not get their money. Last year they did not either." Farmers were still planting the same amount for a third year, although a third of the crop was beyond domestic consumption, which he said meant the right information was not reaching them.

Fertiliser and seed were still heavily subsidised, he said. "We are not America or Saudi Arabia. We do not have endless oil and gas underground. But we have farmland," he added, calling food security a matter of national security.

CPD senior research associate Fakhruddin Al Kabir presented the findings. According to Bangla Tribune, the study surveyed 820 traders in 10 markets in Dhaka division and analysed the supply chains of 10 essential, domestically produced food items. It found these gaps between producer and retail prices:

• Green chilli: 116 per cent
• Medium-quality rice: about 100 per cent
• Onion: 87 per cent
• Lentils: 78 per cent
• Brinjal: 72 per cent
• Potato: 50 per cent
• Eggs: 25 per cent; chicken: 22 per cent; beef: 13 per cent; rohu fish: 10 per cent

Prothom Alo reported that a kilogram of Paijam rice sold by farmers at an average of Tk 30.65 retailed at Tk 59.69. The study found that farmers receive 50.8 per cent of the final retail price of medium-quality rice. It also cautioned against blaming intermediaries alone. CPD recommended cutting unnecessary links in the supply chain, more competition in wholesale markets, transparent pricing, and more cold storage and cold-chain facilities.

CPD executive director Fahmida Khatun said inflation had been a cause of concern for the economy for four years, and rising food prices put direct pressure on people. Garment Sramik Sanghati president Taslima Akhter Lima said that when food prices rise, the real wages of low-income people fall, so effective market monitoring was essential.

Former secretary Siddiqur Rahman said the government once intervened actively in the rice and wheat markets, a role that had shrunk under the free-market economy and needed reassessing. Former NBR chairman Abdul Majid said cutting taxes alone could not bring prices down without integrated market management.

Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) president AHM Shafiquzzaman said farmers were the worst affected and government incentives did not reach real farmers. Agricultural economist MA Sattar Mandal said that, with farming now commercial, the biggest challenge was making the marketing of farm produce more efficient, competitive and transparent.

Photo: NahidSultan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Prothom Alo, Bangla Tribune, Codex Alimentarius Commission