Tendency of shifting blame on to each other among retailers, wholesalers and mill owners was mainly responsible for the high price of soybean oil in the market.
Retailers said they were not getting soybean oil at the government fixed price from the wholesalers. On the other hand the wholesalers asserted that lack of smooth supply of soybean oil from the millers was mainly responsible for the present high price of soybean oil.
Wholesalers at Moulvibazar in city said they were not getting smooth supply of loose (unpackaged) soybean oil from the mill owners.
"Most of the wholesalers in the capital are yet to get sufficient supply of soybean oil from the mill owners," Abul Hashem, former general secretary of Bangladesh Wholesale Edible Oil Merchants Association, told The FE Friday.
On the other hand, millers said they started selling soybean oil at the government fixed rate to the wholesalers.
"We have been trying our level best for smooth supply of soybean oil to the wholesalers," a refiner on condition of anonymity told the FE Friday.
On the other hand, unscrupulous retailers in the city's kitchen markets were still selling loose soybean oil beyond the revised price fixed by the government.
Though the government has strictly ordered the retailers to sell loose soybean oil and palm oil on litre basis rather than in kilogrammes, in most cases retailers were seen violating the government decision, according to a market survey by the FE correspondent Friday.
Commerce Minister Muhammad Faruk Khan on December 5 at a meeting with the oil refiners strictly directed traders to sell loose soybean oil and palm oil on litre basis. The meeting revised the retail price of loose soybean oil downward by Tk 5.0 per litre.
According to the decision, the retail selling price of loose soybean oil was re-fixed at Tk 86 per litre for Dhaka and Tk 84 per litre for Chittagong. The mill-gate prices of loose soybean oil for Dhaka and Chittagong would be Tk 83 and Tk 81 per litre respectively.
But customers in the city's kitchen markets expressed their dissatisfaction over the price of loose soybean oil. They called upon the government to strengthen market monitoring to stop stem traders from making windfall profit.
"The market monitoring activities need to be intensified so that unscrupulous traders could not make windfall profit according to their whim," Md Mizanur Rahman, a private service-holder, told the FE at Fakirapool Bazar in city Friday.
The price of lose soybean oil rose 1.48 per cent while palm oil increased 2.52 per cent in the last one month. The hikes in soybean oil and palm oil prices had been 20.80 per cent and 42.98 per cent respectively in the last one year, according to daily market report by the state owned Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) Friday.
