BTTC wants no duty on rice imports

The Bangladesh Trade and Tariff Commission (BTTC) has requested the government to temporarily withdraw import duty on rice to increase the supply and, in turn, contain the price of this staple food in the local markets.
To this end, the BTTC sent a report to the commerce ministry, food ministry, and the National Board of Revenue (NBR) yesterday.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, food inflation has remained above 10 percent for six consecutive months since April this year.
Although the price of fine rice remained unchanged over the last month, medium and coarse varieties, which are consumed the most, saw a 1.74 percent and 1.9 percent increase, respectively, over the same period, said the BTTC report.
A reason for the increase can be attributed to the back-to-back floods and inclement weather that have caused damage to standing paddy crops across the country.
According to data from the Department of Agricultural Extension, two recent floods between August 16 to October 15 have disrupted the production of 8.39 lakh tonnes of rice.
Earlier on October 20, the NBR reduced the import duty on rice to 25 percent from 62.5 percent to encourage imports and increase supply in the local markets.
The NBR said that the duty cut would help lower the import cost by Tk 14.4 per kilogramme.
However, after the duty cut, the importers ordered the import of only 26 tonnes of rice so far, the BTTC report mentioned.
Amid this situation, necessary rice imports will only be encouraged if the duties are exempted as part of efforts to stabilise the market prices, the BTTC report said.
The report also said that local producers are unlikely to suffer if rice is imported at the price of the international markets, which will keep the price of imported rice above the price of the locally grown rice.
Bangladesh annually needs about 3.7 to 3.9 crore tonnes of rice, most of which are met through domestic production.