Sugar price skyrockets for supply crunch

The price of sugar has skyrocketed in the market as the supply of the food has drastically decreased in the country over the past few days.

Most of the retail shops at Mohammadpur, Shewrapara, Mirpur-6, Mirpur-12, Dhanmondi, Kuril, and Badda ran out of sugar on Saturday.

The retail shop owners claim that they have not gotten the sugar supply from the wholesaler since last week.

A gas crisis to refine the sugar and frequent load-shedding of electricity have been hampering the production of the sweetener,        said Abul Hashem, a wholesaler of sugar and edible oil in Old Dhaka’s Moulvibazar.

The wholesale price of loose sugar was Tk 93 per kg on Saturday, but most of the wholesalers didn’t have stock, said the wholesaler.

Some retailers and shop owners in Mohammadpur, Mirpur-6, and some other areas were selling loose sugar at Tk 100-105 per kg and packet sugar at Tk 110-115 per kg.

The price of the loose sugar was Tk 90-97 per kg and the packet sugar was Tk 105-110 per kg at the market a week earlier.

The price of both loose and packed sugar is much higher than the government-fixed price. The government fixed the price of sugar in the first week of October after increasing the previous price.

The government fixed the price of loose sugar at Tk 90 per kg and packaged sugar at Tk 95 per kg at the retail shop.

“We had a stock of sugar a few days earlier at a higher price and sold it at a higher price. But, I have no stock of sugar from Friday as most of them have been sold out,” said Md. Roman of Bismillah General Store at Mohammadpur.

According to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh, sugar prices increased by 17.28 percent in the previous year, while they increased by 2.70 percent in the previous week.

The annual demand for sugar is 25,00,000 tonnes in the country, while the local mills produce only 100,000 tonnes and the rest is imported.