Country Investment Plan to execute food security programme prepared

FE Report Bangladesh has prepared the Country Investment Plan (CIP) to implement country's food security programme, Food Minister Dr Muhammad Abdur Raz­zaque said at a workshop in the city Sunday. He said, "Bangladesh has been the first recipient country of a grant worth $ 50 million in Asia concerned with CIP from the global agriculture and food security programme". Dr Razzaque said efforts were underway to secure larger funds from the global initiatives to minimise the financial gap identified in the CIP. He was speaking as the chief guest at the inaugural session of a two-day workshop titled "Research to Inform Food and Nutrition Security Policies" held at a city hotel. The National Food Policy Capacity Streng­thening Programme (NFPCSP) organised the workshop searching for right policies and right action to face the challenge of the 'food security' phenomena in Bangladesh. The minister said that the CIP is a comprehensive plan aligned with the Sixth Five-Year Plan currently being implemented by the government. "It is the conversion of the food policy plan of action and other planning frameworks into investment programmes to fill gap, scale up current positive interventions and develop new programmes prioritised by the government," Dr Razzaque said. He said the CIP aims at securing funds from multilateral and bilateral partners and making available funds by the government. Talking about challenges of food security concern the minister said, "Although crop production has tripled in the last four decades, increase in both population and consumption is a major challenge". He expressed his concern that farmland was getting reduced alarmingly due to rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. "Researches are being conducted by both government and private sectors to find out ways to increase productivity considering the limited lands and nutrition deficiency. More researches are needed to achieve the goal," he said. Dr Naser Farid, director general, Food Planning and Monitoring Unit (FPMU), the Ministry of Food and Disaster Management (MoFDM), said that the CIP was jointly prepared by the government of Bangladesh and UN's FAO, built on the National Food Policy 2006 (NFP) and its Plan of Action (POA) was launched in 2009. He appreciated the role of NFPCSP of FAO, European Commission and USAID for taking up the programme and for giving financial support for its implementation. Mr Farid said the FPMU of MoFDM, policy and planning wings of the partner ministries in collaboration with FAO were working to 'implement NFP through monitoring of its POA and CIP'. The food minister expressed his optimism that the policy recommendation emerged from this workshop would be carefully examined with high priority and also be utilised in implementing the NFP, POA and CPI. When asked, the minister informed the reporters that the country need not import rice in the fiscal year (FY) 2011-12 as it got bumper production and, parallel to it, public stock capacity reached its record highest to 1.55 million tonnes including 1.27 million tonnes of rice. Chaired by Abdul Awal Howladar, additional secretary, MoFDM, the inaugural session was also addressed by Dr Fatema Parveen Chowdhury, director, Institute of Public Health and Nutrition, Dr Dominique Burgeon, FAO representative in Bangladesh, Mr Richard Greene, mission director USAID, Mr Milko van Gool, counsellor and head of delegation, European Union to Bangladesh, among others.