A meeting on Sunday by the Food Planning and Monitoring Committee decided to speed up the collection of food grain in pipeline as the overall food stock has reached the lowest level in two years, said officials.
At present, there is around 12.22 lakh tonnes of rice and wheat in the government silos, compared to 16.25 lakh tonnes in 2023 and 14.22 lakh tonnes in 2022.
Of the present amount, the storage of rice is 8.94 lakh tonnes, compared with 11.94 lakh tonnes in 2023 and 12.73 lakh tonnes in 2022.
The present stock includes 3.30 lakh tonnes of wheat.
The present stock still maintains the benchmark of 12 lakh tonnes food grains, set in 2019 from previous 10.50 lakh tonnes, said the officials.
Presided over by food minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder at the Secretariat, the Food Planning and Monitoring Committee fixed the procurement price of per kilogram paddy at Tk 32 from last year鈥檚 Tk 30 and that of parboiled rice at Tk 45 from the last year鈥檚 Tk 44.
The food minister said that the government would procure five lakh tonnes of paddy, 11 lakh tonnes of parboiled rice, one lakh tonne of non-parboiled rice between May 7 and August 31,
The food minister informed other members of the committee that 1.2 lakh tonnes of wheat had reached the country鈥檚 ports and another 3 lakh tonnes of wheat was in import stage.
This was the first meeting of this committee under the present government.