Escalating food prices in Bangladesh

Spare a thought for Bangladesh where on top of yesterday’s order for everyone (the whole country) to wear a mask in public, prices for food are creeping up.  We are keeping a close watch on the ‘shopping trolley’ of those in the region where we run our schools in particular.  It’s a rural region—almost everything is locally grown or fished.   The prices (if you simply do a conversion to the Australian dollar for example) look pretty good—a kilo of rice for less than a dollar, and who wouldn’t want a dozen locally grown eggs for just over a $2?  However, dig deeper and the figures are much more worrying.  If you look at costs as a proportion of a monthly adult wage, a kilo of lentils represents around 2% of the WHOLE MONTH’s paypacket…and translated into Australian wages for the average worker (I’m valuing the ‘average’ worker at $1000 a week by the way), a litre of soybean oil would come to $60.   A dozen eggs would also cost you $60…..That would be hard to swallow…