Govt to continue OMS to ensure food for all

The government will continue food distribution under the Open Market Sale (OMS) programme to ensure food security of all people across the country.

"At the instruction of the interim government, the food ministry took a three month action plan from August this year. Under the plan, food distribution under OMS programme is going on to ensure people's food security," Food Secretary M Masudul Hasan told BSS.

Under the programme, the food grains are now being sold across the country from a total of 1,133 sale centers, he said.

The OMS programme run by the food ministry will continue till end of this month. However, the OMS run by the Trading Corporation Bangladesh (TCB) will continue, the secretary said. 

Under the OMS programme any individual gets maximum 5 kg rice at Tk30 per kg and 5 kg loose atta at Tk24 per kg every week.

In Dhaka city, people can buy 5kg rice along with two packets of atta weighing 2 kg each at a rate of Tk55 under the programme.

At the same time, the government has amended the OMS Policy-2015 and Food Friendly Policy-2017 to make it time-befitting to help control food price and ensure food support for lower income people.

In order to control the food price, the secretary said, the government has launched an online monitoring system to oversee the market price of rice and paddy. 

The food ministry has developed an idea on 'real time monitoring on market price of rice and paddy' aiming to procure and preserve rice and paddy at wholesale price from important hats and bazars of rice producing districts.

To make a central database of the wholesale price of rice and paddy, a mobile app and web based application software have been developed on the basis of information collected from 20 important paddy and rice markets.

In addition to this, food secretary said the government has already removed all the duties on rice private sector import and advance income tax has been reduced to 2% from 5%.

The government has allowed the private sector to import 3.27 lakh tonnes of rice within one month as a total of 59 rice importers have already got official approval.

Of the total amount of rice, 2.47 lakh tonnes will be boiled rice and 80,000 tonnes will be non-boiled (Atap) rice.

"Permission has been given for rice import to keep the price in the retail market stable," said Additional Secretary (Procurement and Supply) M Habibur Rahman Hosaini.

Under the food friendly programme of the government about 2.50 crore people of 50 lakh families in the rural areas are getting 30 kg rice each at a rate of Tk15 per kg for five months during the lean period every year.

The government has prepared a database of the consumers to ensure the transparency of the programme.

Under the Modern Food Storage Facility Project the government, with the support of the World Bank, has undertaken steps for strengthening food storage capacity.

Under the project, seven modern Steel Silos are being constructed to raise the stock capacity about 18 lakh tonnes from the existing 13 lakh tonnes.