Prices of staple items and fruits have risen by up to 50 percent in the past few months. Engineering scarcity by stocking edibles is a common trick oft employed by traders to raise their profit margins. It is time to put a full stop on such malpractice. Injecting panic in people and profiting from it by charging exorbitant prices on essentials is tantamount to theft. For those low in the society’s economic ladder, the price rise has already made two proper meals a day unaffordable, and for those who refuse to hoard, staple food item is becoming increasingly unavailable. If the businessmen whose warehouses were sealed on Saturday are indeed found to have stocked food to create artificial scarcity, they should be given maximum punishment provisioned in the Black Marketing and Social Crime Act.
But there is another side to the price rise that cannot be dealt with by raids and punishments only. A bigger and better-coordinated mechanism involving all concerned agencies of the state is needed to tackle the drought-induced drop in agricultural productivity across the country. According to the World Food Program (WFP), the winter drought of 2008/09 destroyed crop production across Nepal and dropped production of wheat and barley by 14 and 17 percent respectively. Crop yields in mid- and far-western Nepal have dropped by more than 50 percent. The Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives has estimated that paddy production is likely to drop by 4.5 million tons this year. WFP has estimated that 40 of 75 districts face food deficiency.
Regulating the market to root out cartels, black marketing, and hoarding, and at same time ensuring abundant availability of essentials to tackle a larger climatic threat on food security is a must if the government is serious about achieving its target of bringing down inflation to 7 percent in the fiscal year 2009/10 from last fiscal year’s 13 percent.
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