Bangladesh to buy rice from Myanmar despite crisis !
Bangladesh will buy 1,00,000 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, reports Reuters.
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.
Muslim-majority Bangladesh and mostly Buddhist Myanmar have been at odds over the more than 1 million Muslim Rohingya refugees in camps in southern Bangladesh.
The vast majority of them fled Myanmar in 2017 from a military-led crackdown that UN investigators said was executed with “genocidal intent” – assertions that Myanmar denies.
Bangladesh will import white rice in a government-to-government deal at US485 (S$644) a tonne, including cost, insurance and freight (CIF) 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,” Ms Khanum told Reuters on Sunday (Jan 24), adding the government could buy as much as 10 million tonnes while private traders are allowed to buy another 10 million tonnes in the year to June.
