How is it that there is no demand for free rice but these is demand for purchasing rice? The article says that there is need:
In the meantime, many victims still need food, according to aid agencies and non-government organisations (NGOs). "Significant pockets of food insecurity remain," said Pippa Bradford, the Nepal country director for the World Food Program, which provided food assistance to two million people in the aftermath of the earthquake. "Those worst affected - who lost the most - were those least able to recover, such as female-headed households and marginalised indigenous and ethnic groups." "There are some communities that still need food, that's true. Even in normal times, some of our people were in deficit of food and it makes sense to distribute it," said Rudra Neupane, the director of NGO Phase Nepal, which focuses much of its aid and relief projects on remote areas of the country. "The people living in higher areas are in need of food. Alternately, they could distribute in the far west; there is always a shortage of food there," he said.
Bangladesh donated this rice. Bangladesh is a very poor country, it’s not like they have a surplus to give away. But they gave away 100,000 tons of rice to Nepal because of the earthquake, to save lives and keep people from going hungry. How will they feel when they find out that their rice was sold instead, and the money went to the government? Or are there no hungry people in Nepal anymore?
The government claims they’ll put the money into a “future disaster relief fund”. Besides the fact that everyone knows that a fund sitting there waiting for the next disaster will be skimmed by corrupt politicians long before the next disaster arrives, how do you think this will affect donors when the government goes begging to the UN for more disaster aid money for the current emergency, as they did last month? What will donors think when on one hand you tell them “we need money for disaster relief because people are still suffering from the earthquake” but on the other hand you also say “ we don’t have emergency needs anymore, this $30 million from selling Bangladeshi aid rice will go for future emergencies?”
Things of this kind just basically tell the world that “we’re a corrupt, useless government, don’t give us any more money”. They piss off Bangladeshis and other aid donors, who will be hesitant to donate next time. Meanwhile, a significant fraction of the rice has already rotted away in storage, and more will be lost in the “several months” before it can be sold. And hungry people in Nepal will still be hungry, even though there is rice which was expressly donated for them by foreign countries.