The government will provide 5kgs of rice at Tk 30 to the Trading Corporation Bangladesh (TCB) card holder families from July 1, said Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder on Sunday.

“Currently one crore families are getting TCB products and from July 1 the cardholders will get 5 kgs of rice at Tk 30 along with other items. The open market sales (OMS) dealers will provide the rice,” he said while talking to reporters after a meeting over the progress of Boro procurement at the Secretariat.

Replying to a question about the process of 5kgs of rice, the minister said when the cardholders will get their TCB items they will also get the rice through OMS dealers. That means rice has been included as a TCB item.

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Sadhan Chandra said, “When the price of rice was slightly higher, we conducted the rice sale through 2,500 OMS dealers across the country and we also distributed additional 2 lakh metric tonnes of rice through OMS after taking approval from the Finance Ministry.”

Besides, we also provid rice to 50 lakh families regularly through conducting food-friendly programme and they are getting 30 kgs of rice each month.

Talking about the boro procurement, the minister said the government has procured 6,56,587 metric tonnes of rice and 1,15,272 metric tonnes of paddy till June 24 during the ongoing boro procurement season.

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“We had set a target to procure 12.5 lakh metric tonnes of rice and 4 lakh metric tonnes of paddy. Our targets will be fulfilled this June,” he said.
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