Why food price hike worries us
THE rising rate of inflation has been in the news for the last month or so. The Daily Star on December 18 wrote that inflation rate on point-to-point basis had increased by 46 percent in a month and stood at 6.71percent in October against 4.60 percent in September mainly because of rising food price. Different quarters have expressed concern that rising food price is making the livelihood of low and middle-income groups difficult. There are different varieties of food. What people consume most are cereals, vegetables, starchy tubers, pulses, meat and fish, eggs, edible oil, milk and milk products, sugar, and tea and coffee. Official sources and media reports reveal that prices of different varieties of fine rice rose between 3.77 percent and 7.27 percent while the prices of different varieties of coarse rice were higher more or less by 6 percent in the last one month. Prices of lentil rose by 8.87 percent, potato by 15.38 percent, and ata by 12.20 percent during the same period. The prices of different varieties of five-litre bottled soya bean oil rose by Tk. 30 in a month. Rising price of sugar has been a matter of concern. More instances may be cited. Why do the people of Bangladesh become worried at the price hike of food? Food ranks the highest in household expenditure in the country. The table shows percentage distribution of average monthly household consumption expenditure by major groups: It appears from the above that 53.81 percent of the average monthly household consumption expenditure accounted for food and beverage at national level in 2005. The figure varied between rural areas and urban areas. In rural areas, 58.54 percent consumption expenditure accounted for food and beverage, whereas the same was 45.17 percent in urban areas. The rising price of rice, which is the staple food of Bangladesh and provides about 93 percent of the country's cereal intake and more than 70 percent of the calorie intake, significantly lowers the real income of poor households as rice alone accounts for about 70 percent of the total spending on food. For the poorest, rise in the prices of food items, particularly of rice, forces them to reduce their food consumption, endangering their very lives. Although, according to official statistics, the percentage of the population living below poverty line has fallen from over 70 percent in 1970 to 40 percent at the moment, the income disparity between the poor and the rich has continued to widen. The Poverty Monitoring Survey Report 2004 of the BBS shows that, at the national level, monthly income of the households increased from 1999 to 2004 by 10.2 percent. While for non-poor households the income increased by 13.8 percent, the income of the poor households decreased by 3.5 percent. In the urban areas, while per household income for all households increased by 8.4 percent from 1999 to 2004, per household income of non-poor households increased by7.9 percent, and per household income of the poor households decreased by 5.3 percent. In the rural areas, while household income of non-poor households increased by 3.2 percent, the income of the poor households decreased by 4.07 percent. So, the price hike of food items seriously affects the poor, particularly the rural poor who constitute 75 percent of the 60 million people living below poverty line. Utilisation of food is one of the important components of food security. While price hike of food makes it almost impossible for poor households to acquire required food, it affects severely women and children who have less access to food compared to adult males. Poor nutrition takes a devastating toll on children and women in poor households. Price hike of food stuff, particularly of cereals (rice and wheat), leads to monga (famine-like situation), normally in northern districts of the country, in the months of October and November, primarily due to lack of purchasing power of the poor. Last but not the least, price hike of food and other essential commodities may lead to serious social unrest. It creates discontent, violence and food riots. We saw how several thousand garment workers at Fatullah, Narayanganj clashed with the law enforcers and smashed cars and vandalised factories on April 12, 2008 in anger at price hike of food and other essentials and low wages. In 2008, food price hikes sparked food riots in some African and Asian countries including Ethiopia, Cameroon, Haiti and the Philippines. In view of the fact that food is the most important of all the basic necessities in human life and per capita income in Bangladesh is one of the lowest in the world, and that it is the constitutional responsibility of the state to make provision for the basic necessities of life, including food, no government can avoid the responsibility of making food available to the people at affordable prices.
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