MARKET DEVELOPMENT
No soybean oil in stores yet
No soybean oil in stores yet
09.05.2022 (www.dhakatribune.com) - Most of the groceries in the city are out of soybean oil, except for a few big shops in the essential commodity markets, even though the government raised its price to Tk198 on Sunday--a record price hike of Tk38 per litre of soybean oil.
After the new prices came into effect on Friday, the oil companies started supplying both soybean and palm oil through distributors, though these supplies have not yet reached the retail level.
Few shops took advantage of the crisis and charged newly fixed prices for previous supplies, old one-litre poly-packs of soybean oil with MRP tags of Tk160 were found in a few shops across the city but they were sold for Tk200-210 each.
Due to a supply shortage, the cooking oil market has been turbulent from the last week of February to the third week of April.
The scenario is the same in most markets in Chittagong, Barishal, Sherpur, Jamalpur, Naogaon, Kushtia and several other districts.
According to the Secretary of Bangladesh Wholesale Edible Oil Merchants Association Abul Hashem, the traders have just started issuing supply orders (SOs) for loose palm and soybean oils after the Eid-ul-Fitr holidays.
In light of the supply deficit of soybean oil, the government raised the prices of bottled soybean oil to Tk198 per litre, loose soybean oil to Tk180 per litre, and palm oil to Tk172 per litre on May 6.
According to the Trading Corporation of Bangladesh (TCB), some traders have been selling oil at Tk210.
Last year, Bangladesh had 2.72 million tons of oil available for a total demand of 2.4 million tons.
More than 13.68 lakh tonnes of palm and soybean oil worth Tk16,119.36 crore were imported through the Chittagong and Mongla ports in the last four months, according to the National Board of Revenue (NBR).
According to global commodity web portals, global soybean and palm oil prices have reached new highs, with crude soybean oil selling at US$1,900-2,000 per ton and palm oil at $1,680-1,750 per ton for the last two months.