Further increase in prices of edible oil, rice, flour, onion and potato last week brought the commoners, who are already hit by the pandemic, to their knees.
Price of loose soybean oil rose Tk5.0 a litre to Tk150-155 a litre and palm oil to Tk140-148 a litre while medium and finer rice varieties were selling at Tk57 to 86 a kg, showing a Tk2.0-3.0 hike each kg.
Meanwhile, the government on February 06 approved the maximum retail price (MRP) of one-litre bottled soybean oil at Tk168, five-litre jar at Tk795, loose soybean oil at Tk143 and palm oil at Tk 134 a litre set by the refiners earlier in the third week of January, according to groceries and online shops in the city.
Loose soybean and palm oil were selling at much higher rates than the government fixed prices in absence of market surveillance, Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) secretary Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan alleged.
Prices of medium-quality rice hit Tk57-Tk60 a kg and the finer-quality ones stood at Tk68-Tk86 a kg rising from Tk55-Tk 57 and Tk65-Tk 86 a kg respectively in the city retail markets.
Coarse varieties of rice remained static at their previous high of Tk48-52 a kg in the city but were available in only few shops forcing a large number of households to consume the medium varieties of the staple, said many inhabitants in the tenement areas.
"There is a scarcity of coarse rice in the nearby groceries which often forces us to by medium-quality rice at higher rates," said Md Mustakim, salesman of a crockery shop at Rayer Bazar.
"Apart from rice, loose palm oil also witnessed almost 100 per cent hike in its price in the last one and a half years, for which many of us have to buy oil in less volume," said Mr Mustakim, who makes a daily income of Tk450 from the crockery shop.
Mustakim also lamented soaring prices of flour, chicken, cultured fish, egg, lentil and vegetables.
"Onion, potato and vegetables were a little bit cheaper but those also have started getting pricier in the last few days," he said.
However, prices of potato and local onion witnessed Tk5.0 a kg hike in a week as onion was available at Tk30-40 a kg and potato at Tk18-22 a kg.
Prices of all types of vegetables, excluding tomato and green papaya, witnessed a further hike last week by Tk5.0-10 a kg, according to city vendors.
Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) vice president SM Nazer Hossain said higher inflation coupled with decline in income has put a vast majority of the population in great hardship during the ongoing pandemic.
"We've been requesting the government for the last one and a half years to review duties on some import-dependent essential commodities following surge in prices of such products on the global market," he said.
"But the government hardly listened to the plea of the consumers as VATs on edible oil, sugar and rice are still on their same high," he said.
He added duty on rice is reviewed for two or three months but that cannot lay any impact on the market.
Mr Hossain urged the government to reduce import duties on key essential commodities for an interim period, considering the pandemic situation.
He also felt urgency of strengthening market monitoring to check any artificial price hike through syndication.
