Government to purchase 1.8 million tonnes of paddy and rice

The government has set a target of procuring 500,000 metric tonnes of Boro paddy this year. Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed said that this paddy will be procured from May 3 to August 31. In addition to Boro paddy, a target of procuring 1.2 million metric tonnes of parboiled rice, 100,000 metric tonnes of Atap rice and 50,000 metric tonnes of wheat has been set. Rice procurement will start from May 15 and continue till August 31. Of this, the procurement price of Boro paddy has been fixed at Tk 36 per kg, parboiled rice at Tk 49 per kg and Atap rice at Tk 48 per kg. In addition, the procurement price of wheat has been fixed at Tk 36 per kg.
He gave this information after a meeting of the Food Plan Monitoring Committee at the Secretariat today, Wednesday (April 22). If necessary, a decision will be taken to extend the period for procurement of paddy and rice and the procurement of wheat will also be completed within the same period. Regarding wheat procurement, Salahuddin Ahmed said that the government does not always get the desired response in the procurement of wheat in the country. Although the country’s domestic production is about 8 million metric tons, farmers are generally not interested in selling wheat to the government. The country’s total wheat demand is about 8 million metric tons, a large part of which is met through imports. He also said that open tender or government-to-government (G-to-G) method will be followed in wheat import. The Home Minister further said that there is a capacity to store about 1.3 million metric tons of food at the national level, which is considered as a security stock. This amount of stock should always be maintained. However, more than this is kept in stock. Currently, the country has about 1.7 to 1.8 million metric tons of rice in stock.