Staff Correspondent
Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi on Wednesday hoped that the prices of onions will drop within a couple of days because a huge quantity of Onion is being imported from Myanmar and Turkey.
Minister expressed the hope while briefing the newsmen at his secretariat offices. "483 ton of onions from Myanmar have already reached Teknaf in the southeastern district of Cox’s Bazar while another consignment of around 400 to 500 ton from Myanmar is expected to come by a day,” he added. He mentioned that Onion is coming in from Myanmar everyday and have already started coming in from Turkey. So the prices will go down in a couple of days no doubt. Munshi said that there is no way to overcome the crisis without increasing production and the consumers have to be more aware. He however blamed that the prices soaring because many of the traders started to stock onions when India said that they won’t export onion. He said that onion was being imported from Myanmar at Tk 42-43 and the prices should at the highest be Tk 50-55. Meanwhile, in a bid to control the soaring prices of the kitchen staple, Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB) opened sale of onions at Tk 45 per kg across the country from Tuesday after India banned the export of onions on last Sunday.
Bangladesh is one of the top three destinations for Indian onions and prices first started to rise since floods hit one-third of Bangladesh in July this year.
The government has also deployed monitoring teams across the country to check the onion prices in the market.
