Kakinada, Mar 12^th: The price of fine quality rice is increasing day by day in the open market. The rise in prices is imposing lot of burden on the middle class, lower class and even the working class people. The prices of rice especially the branded quality has reached Rs 30 per kilo. Frequent change of prices by the government and the low availability of fine quality rice are the main reasons for the rise in prices. The fine quality rice is grown only in few of the districts like Guntur, Kurnool and others. With this the demand for the fine quality rice is increasing and resulting in rise of prices.

Even with the arrangements made by the district authorities to sell rice at 42 selected outlets and sale in open markets at Rs 20 per Kilo did not fulfill the requirements of the customers. Many of the consumers allege that the rice supplied by the government at the outlets and open market are not good for cooking. Speaking in this concern joint collector, Kona Sasidhar said that the authorities are making arrangements to open few more counters in addition to the existing 42 counters to supply rice to the consumers. He asked the people to bring the incidents of selling rice at higher prices to the notice of administration by calling 6454341.