Days after India’s decision to halt wheat exports, Bangladesh’s wheat import line remains far from dry, as ships carrying wheat from all over the world — from Gujarat to Vancouver – continue to dock at Chittagong Port. Officials from the ministries of food and commerce, the Chittagong Port Authority (CPA), and market sources say there’s no reason for local flour costs to rise much when the typical flow of imported wheat remains steady.
But yet the food directorate’s Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU) reported on Tuesday that the wholemeal wheat flour registered over a 13% rise from Tk38 per kg a week ago to Tk43 a kg now. According to the FPMU report, at least three ships carrying 125,000 tons of wheat anchored at Chittagong Port on Monday. The wheat is now in the process of being unloaded.
Cargo ship Summer Sky carried 32,500 tons of wheat from Vancouver, Canada, to Chittagong Port. Another ship, Propel Grace, brought in nearly 60,000 tons of wheat from Kandla port in India’s Gujarat. Yet another ship, Venture Harmony, carried a volume of 33,000 tons of imported wheat.
Meanwhile, the CPA reports that more ships carrying imported wheat are anchoring at the port this week. These are coming from different countries, including India, Australia and Canada.
The CPA sources confirmed the import of 52,500 tons of wheat by a ship called Emmanuel, 30,000 tons of wheat by Darya Tapti, and 47,610 tons of wheat and chickpeas by a ship called Thor Maximus.
Food officials have told Dhaka Tribune the wheat already agreed upon by both public and private importers from India is very much on track. Besides, private importers are bringing in wheat from all other source countries.
Official figures show that up until Tuesday that the Bangladesh government and private importers together had imported nearly 4.5 million tons of food grains (wheat and rice) in the current financial year (2021-22) and there was no immediate worry about Bangladesh running out of food stocks.
Of the imported food grains, over 3.4 million tons are wheat and nearly another one million tons are rice. Bangladesh’s public sector granaries have 1.1 million tons of food reserves, which is nearly double than what was there in May last year.
Of over 3.4 million tons of wheat that have so far been imported in the current fiscal, the government brought less than half a million tons while the rest was imported by private importers.
Letters of credit (LCs) have been opened for the import of over six million tons of wheat in 2021-22 and so far LCs have been settled for the import of over 4.7 million tons of wheat.
However, market sources acknowledge the reality that prices of wheat and freight charges have increased as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict, among other factors, and carrying charges for wheat imported from Canada, Australia, and the US are higher compared to the ones brought from India. Imported wheat prices were, on average, in the range of $260 to $280 a ton last year. But currently, it has risen in the range of $375 to $400.
