Ramadan festivities suffer from skyrocketing prices in Bangladesh

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AA) – Mohammad Ibrahim Khalil was haggling with a vendor at a floating iftar bazaar in old Dhaka, where he usually buys food items popular among Bangladeshis during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

“We have been buying foods from Chawkbazar Iftar market for generations to break our fast during Ramadan,” Khalil, a local resident, shared. However, the situation is different this year, as prices for all commodities, including food for iftar, have risen dramatically, he lamented.

The floating bazaar, located in front of the historic Chawkbazar Shahi Mosque, is regarded as one of the largest iftar markets in the South Asian Muslim majority nation of nearly 170 million people.

People come from all over the country during Ramadan to buy from hundreds of food varieties that carry the fasting month’s tradition and food culture. They enjoy the market’s hustle and bustle as well as praying at the historic big mosque, which was built in 1664 by Shaista Khan, then-subahdar or head of the provincial administration during the Mughal dynasty in the then-greater Indian subcontinent.

“I’m not sure when Chawkbazar’s floating iftar market first opened. But I remember my father, grandfather, and predecessors coming here to buy Iftar items,” Khalil said and explained that the skyrocketing cost of food has forced him to drastically reduce his family’s iftar budget this year.

Many others in the market agreed with Khalil, saying living costs in every sector have nearly doubled in a year, without any significant increase in income.

Kitchen management is difficult

Many housewives said that maintaining a family kitchen on a limited income is becoming increasingly difficult. “We’re in big trouble,” said Yeasmin Begum, a housewife from the Shantinagar neighborhood. “For example, I need a 2-kilogram item, but I can’t even buy one kilogram due to the price increase,” she explained, before asking, “How can we manage our family in this manner?”

She said that children are in more difficult circumstances because many families are unable to provide adequate nutrition due to poverty and rising food prices.

“Low protein intake has begun to affect children, women, especially those pregnant or breastfeeding, and the elderly,” public health expert Lelin Chowdhury said, adding that the country’s inflation is high and people’s economic conditions have deteriorated. They are now worse off than they were during the days of COVID-19, the expert said.

“The level of public health nutrition has been downgraded in Bangladesh,” he said, adding that fruit prices have skyrocketed.

In March, inflation reached 9.33%, the highest level in seven months, up from 8.78% in February, Bangladesh Planning Minister MA Mannan said in Dhaka on Tuesday.

Difficult Ramadan at Rohingya camps

The holy month of Ramadan for Rohingya refugees in camps in the southern border district of Cox’s Bazar still evokes memories of their homeland, Myanmar’s Rakhine State, where the persecuted people shared the festivity of the holy month with their loved ones.

“Ramadan was always a great source of joy for us in our motherland. But here we are, in congested camps, depending on limited relief items from donors. Ramadan is no longer as joyful for us as it was in our homeland,” Mohammed Alam, a Rohingya refugee, recounted.

Alam is one of the Rohingyas in Bangladesh’s squalid makeshift camps who lost everything in a devastating fire last month.

Bangladesh is currently hosting more than 1.2 million Rohingya at 33 crammed camps that have turned the settlement into the world’s largest refugee camp. The Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar have been termed by the UN as the “most persecuted people in the world”, who fled a brutal military crackdown in their native Rakhine State in August 2017.

Alam said they always dream of returning to their motherland with citizenship rights and due dignity under the UN’s safety guarantee and enjoying Ramadan with their family members.

Lack of accountability

Analysts, however, believe that there are several reasons for skyrocketing prices of daily commodities in the country, particularly during Ramadan.

Ghulam Rahman, president of the Consumers Association of Bangladesh and former chairman of the country’s main corruption watchdog, said that traders, producers and refiners sometimes try to make a big profit during Ramadan very unethically.

“During the holy month, businesspeople in many countries, including non-Muslim states, offer significant discounts. However, it appears that business owners here have a somewhat different philosophy… they want to make a huge profit in a single month,” Rahman explained.

He proposed swift justice and exemplary punishment for wrongdoers so that they do not commit the same crime again.

Rahman has also suggested ensuring an adequate supply of daily necessities in the market by increasing vigilance against illegal storage, which always creates an artificial crisis during Ramadan.