Bangladesh to import rice

BANGLADESH will buy 100,000 tonnes of rice from Myanmar, putting aside a rift over the Rohingya refugee crisis as the government races to overcome a shortage of the staple food for the country’s more than 160 million people.

High rice prices pose a problem for the Dhaka government, which is ramping up efforts to replenish its depleted reserves after floods last year ravaged crops and sent prices to a record high.

Bangladesh and Myanmar have been at odds over the more than one million Muslim Rohingya refugees in camps in southern Bangladesh. Bangladesh will import white rice in a governmentto-government deal at $485 (£354) a tonne, including cost, insurance and freight liner out basis, said Mosammat Nazmanara Khanum, the secretary at the country’s food ministry.

“Our main priority is to bring down the prices of rice,” Khanum said last Sunday (24). The deal will be signed soon and the rice will be delivered by April, she said.

Bangladesh is also buying 150,000 tonnes of rice from India’s state-run firm NAFED in a government-togovernment deal while it has issued a series of tender to buy the grain. “We could buy more rice from India in state-to-state deals,” Khanum said, adding the Food Ministry was holding talks with several other Indian state agencies.