The ongoing OMS programme has yet to draw a significant number of customers in the city due to wrong selection of spots by the dealers and poor quality of rice, according to market observers.
They also said absence of proper campaign on open market sale (OMS) has also prompted the consumers to purchase coarse rice from the kitchen markets.
However, the prices of minicate and nazirshail varieties of rice in the city's kitchen markets remained high on Thursday.
A kg of minicate rice (depending on quality) was sold between Tk 50 and Tk 64 while price of nazirshail ranged between Tk 66 and Tk 68 (depending on quality) on Thursday.
However, the price of coarse variety of rice dropped by Tk 2 (two) per kg at retail level since the start of OMS.
A kg of coarse variety of rice was sold between Tk 42 and Tk 44 on the day (Thursday) which ranged from Tk 46 and Tk 48 per kg before the inception of OMS.
Earlier, the ministry of food (MoF) reintroduced open market sale (OMS) programme for selling rice and atta across the country at subsidised rates from the first week of the current month with a view to checking rice price hike in the kitchen markets.
One kg of coarse variety of rice (boiled) is now selling at Tk 30 while atta at Tk 17 under OMS programme.
A person could purchase five kgs of rice and similar quantity (five kgs) of atta at a time from designated dealers who are selling rice and atta on trucks.
"We are getting good response from the customers.
The number of customers is gradually increasing," Md Kabir, who sells rice and atta from an OMS truck at Motijheel, claimed.
He said on average, the number of customers till Thursday was between 150 and 200 per day since the inception of OMS.
The OMS programme is going on five days a week except weekly holidays.
A dealer in Fakirapool area told the FE that he sold 14 sacks of rice (each contains 50-kg) and the similar number sacks of atta (each contains 50-kg) to 150 customers on Thursday.
A dealer gets 20 sacks of rice and 40 sacks of atta as daily allocation from the government. Customers on different spots told the FE that they prefer to purchase rice at Tk 30 per kg from OMS dealers considering their limited monthly income.
They said before the start of the ongoing OMS programme, they had to spend extra money on purchasing coarse rice from the retail markets with higher prices.
Many of them said improper spot selection by dealers for selling rice and atta was considered to be responsible for not getting sufficient response from the consumers. They said if the spot/location for selling rice and atta by dealers is appropriate, then many customers will throng there for purchasing the commodities. Consumers mainly in the old part of the city face difficulties in reaching the spots for purchasing rice and atta from dealers.
"We want the government to continue the OMS programme until arrival of new harvest of paddy so that we could purchase rice at Tk 30 per kg," domestic help Josna Begum told the FE at Shantinagar area. A high official of the MoF said dealers usually select the spots in their respective areas for selling rice and atta. "It depends on the choice of dealers," he said.
Earlier, the government sold non-parboiled rice at Tk 30 under OMS in September 2017. But response from the customers was poor due to selling of non-parboiled rice.
The OMS programme was suspended in December last due to shortage of rice at government silos.
At present, the country has a stock of over 1.2 million tonnes of rice and nearly 0.5 million tonnes of wheat at the government silos.
talhabinhabib@yahoo.com