REUTERS
Ruma Paul
APAC
January 24, 2021
Ruma Paul
APAC
January 24, 2021
General view of a rice field in a valley in Nyaung Shwe, Shan state, Myanmar, November 6, 2019. REUTERS/Ann Wang
DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh will buy 100,000 tonnes of rice from Myanmar, putting aside a rift over the Rohingya refugee crisis as the government races to overcome a shortage of the staple food for the country’s more than 160 million people.
High rice prices pose a problem for the Dhaka government, which is ramping up efforts to replenish its depleted reserves after floods last year ravaged crops and sent prices to a record high.
Muslim-majority Bangladesh and mostly Buddhist Myanmar have been at odds over the more than 1 million Muslim Rohingya refugees in camps in southern Bangladesh. The vast majority of them fled Myanmar in 2017 from a military-led crackdown that U.N investigators said was executed with “genocidal intent” - assertions that Myanmar denies.
High rice prices pose a problem for the Dhaka government, which is ramping up efforts to replenish its depleted reserves after floods last year ravaged crops and sent prices to a record high.
Muslim-majority Bangladesh and mostly Buddhist Myanmar have been at odds over the more than 1 million Muslim Rohingya refugees in camps in southern Bangladesh. The vast majority of them fled Myanmar in 2017 from a military-led crackdown that U.N investigators said was executed with “genocidal intent” - assertions that Myanmar denies.