Importers of major food items on Sunday blasted the Bangladesh Bank for providing ‘wrong information’ on import of edibles and misleading the traders of essential goods.‘The Bangladesh Bank has been giving wrong information on commodity imports, and is misleading the traders,’ claimed A Rouf Chowdhury, president of the Bangladesh Edible Oil Refiners Association.( The New Age BD)

He was addressing a meeting on Sunday organised by the Bangladesh Rifles to find out the causes of the recent uptrend of the prices of edible oil as well as other essentials.

Chowdhury alleged that the BB, in its regular data on import payments, was still showing that imports were increasing, taking into consideration only the amount of money spent for import. The volume of imports, which is most vital, is not shown in the central bank’s statistics.

‘In fact, due to the sharp rise of the prices of most food items in the global market, importers are procuring far lesser quantities of edibles though they are spending higher sums of money than before,’ argued Chowdhury, who is also a director of the FBCCI.

He told the meeting that imports of certain food items have declined, over the year, by up to 23 per cent, which poses the serious threat of supply crisis, but the BB’s data tends to make countrymen feel that the import situation is okay.

Shahabuddin Alam, managing director of the SA Group, told the meeting that import of edible oils, in the crude form, has declined by more than 1,20,000 tonnes by mid-August this year compared to the corresponding period of the previous year.

Businessmen feel that as Bangladesh depends on the import of many food items and commodities, regular dissemination of fresh import data showing the volumes imported may help not only the business community, but the concerned government departments, to assess the real supply situation and prepare effective plans for future.