To guarantee food security for everyone in the nation, the government will continue to distribute food through Open Market Sales (OMS).

The food ministry has started a three-month action plan in August of this year per the directive of the interim government. To guarantee people’s food security, food distribution is carried out under the OMS program. M Masudul Hasan, the food secretary, told BSS.

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

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

Under the OMS program, any individual can get a maximum of 5kg of rice at Tk30 per kg and 5kg unpackaged flour at Tk24 per kg every week.

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

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 prices 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 the rice and paddy.

The food ministry has developed an idea “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 bazaars 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, the 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 327,000 tons of rice within one month as a total of 59 rice importers have already got official approval.

Of the total amount of rice, 247,000 tons will be boiled rice and 80,000 tons will be non-boiled (Atap) rice.

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

Under the food friendly program of the government about 25 million people of 5 million families in rural areas are getting 30kg of 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 program.

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 to about 180,000 tons from the existing 130,000 tons.