Don't raise liquid milk price
Photo: Amran Hossain
Nowadays most of the households prefer the freshness of pasteurized milk to the powdered milk. So, this trend boosts up the businesses of nine local milk processing companies. A report says that the companies processed nearly 150 million litres of liquid milk in 2011 whereas four years ago it was only 85 million liters. Naturally, over the years, domestic production of milk has increased with the entry of new investors who came in seeing the shortfall in supply against the rising demand, considering its good business prospect. However, in the name of supporting the farmers, recently many companies have raised the liquid milk's prices by at least Tk 3 per litre. But we have learnt from newspaper reports that their purchasing prices at the dairy farmers' end have remained unchanged. Some companies hiked the prices showing the excuse of increased processing, transportation and packing costs. It may be mentioned that prices of Milk Vita milk have been raised six times since 2009. Most of the families meet their nutrition demand with pasteurized milk. Low income consumers can not bear the expense of other nutrition sources. Considering all these things, the government must ensure quality of liquid milk and monitor its price as the companies can not hike its price irrationally.
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