FE Report
Bangladesh needs to boost agriculture's contribution to GDP (gross domestic product) 30 per cent from the current 21 per cent, if it wants to become a middle-income nation by 2021, a leading chamber said Sunday.
"It requires at least 5.0 per cent increase in farm production in order to maintain 6.0 per cent growth in the current financial year," the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI) said after a meeting with agriculture minister Begum Motia Chowdhury.
The MCCI said the target of rice production is set at 35.05 million tonnes for 2009-10 fiscal year and over half--or 18.80 million tonnes --will come from boro.
But the elite chamber said it is possible to achieve this target, only if the government provides support for fertiliser, electricity and seeds.
The MCCI praised the government to offer uninterrupted power supply to farmers during the whole boro season, saying it will encourage farmers to look at production in a more serious way.
The views came as an MCCI delegation led by its president M Anis Ud Dowla called on the agriculture minister at her office and presented a 16-point recommendations.
The major recommendations follow:
1) Ensuring adequate supply and stock of fertiliser throughout the year and maintain this trend;
2) Reaching farmers good, high-yielding seeds at reasonable prices so as to boost productivity and make possible quality industrial products;
3) Official arrangements under proper management should be made to procure food grains directly from the grassroots-level farmers, dismantling the influence of middlemen;
4) Bringing farm products' price stability so that agro-based industrial goods can be stabilised;
5) Providing loans and withdrawal of customs duties on the import of modern machinery and equipment for cultivation;
6) Increasing the quality of research at Bangladesh Rice research Institute and Atomic Energy Commission and the number of research laboratories;
7) Making farmers aware about agricultural credits, their availability and modes of repayment;
8) Ensuring proper land management or the maximum utilisation of limited agricultural land in view of the fact Bangladesh loses 1.0 per cent of its farmland each year;
9) Establishing repository of seeds and vegetables dividing the whole country into some few sectors;
10) Orienting farmers toward modern cultivation and imparting proper training. For this it requires to encourage agro-based industrial units
11) Introducing tax holiday for food-processing industries
12) Reducing toll on transportation of food and withdrawing VAT on sales
13) Introducing crop insurance for reducing vulnerability of farmers;
14) Making farmers aware about soil tests for what types of grains farmers can produce and what type of fertiliser they will use;
15) Offering incentives/ encouraging support for fostering research and development (R&D) on the costs of private sector to foster invention of new species;
16) Allowing use of genetically-modified seeds to make Bangladesh food-sufficient in the next 30 years.
Motia Chowdhury, also the agriculture minister at the time, gave permission for cultivating hybrid rice in 1996, despite stiff opposition from agricultural scientists and the MCCI president said the decision helped increase hybrid rice production in 50 per cent of Bangladesh's cultivable lands.
Agri contribution to GDP needs to rise 30pc: MCCI
FE Team | Published: January 18, 2010 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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