EC to give Tk 3.36b for expanding food security in country
Friday, 14 December 2007
The European Union (EU) will provide a grant of euro 33.6 million (Tk 3.36 billion) for expanding food security in Bangladesh under an agreement signed in the city Thursday, reports UNB.
Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Aminul Islam Bhuiyan and Head of EC delegation to Bangladesh Ambassador Dr Stefan Frowein signed the agreement at the ERD office for the fund, which will be spent under the Food and Security Programme 2006 in Bangladesh during the next five years.
The overall objective of the food security programme is the reduction of extreme poverty and malnutrition in Bangladesh "by improving socio-economic condition of the very poor and by managing and improving food security in an effective way".
The programme is developed in line with the overall objectives of the EC's 2007-2013 Country Strategy Paper for Bangladesh, which focuses on reducing poverty and assisting Bangladesh's integration into the world economy.
An EC release on the agreement said the intervention would tackle several specific areas of food insecurity aimed at improving the availability, access and utilisation of food among vulnerable groups and strengthening the capacity of Bangladesh government.
The programme's main goals are - improvement in nutrition and educational performance of poor and ultra-poor primary schoolchildren in area with high levels of food security, setting up a sustainable national surveillance scheme to monitor nutrition indicators and providing high-quality statistical data related to food security.
The goals also include strengthening the implantation monitoring and evaluation capacity of a comprehensive, equitable and gender-sensitive pro-poor national food policy and action plan, promotion of optimal farming practices for enhanced production and access by vulnerable households of nutritious food through crop diversification and sustainable improvements in soil fertility.
"Although poverty rates in Bangladesh have gone down by about 10 percentage points since the early 1990s, it still has the third-highest absolute number of poor and malnourished people in the world, affecting almost half of its population. Women and children remain especially vulnerable," says the EC.
Since 1976 food aid, and more recently food security, has been a central area of EC interventions in Bangladesh. While the focus in the early 1990s was on food availability and agricultural production, the approach has evolved to food-security interventions supporting income generation, training and capacity building.
The shift in strategy of tackling food insecurity in Bangladesh has been set against the background of an increasing trend towards central (rice) self-sufficiency at a national level and the need to directly address sustainable development for the most vulnerable groups as well as improving Bangladesh's policy environment.
Parallel to the Food Security Programme 2006, the implementation of actions such as Vulnerable Group Development for Ultra-Poor (VGDUP), Rural Employment Opportunities for Public Assets (REOPA), Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Project (BDPP), Food Security for Sustainable Household Livelihoods (FOSHOL) project and others increase the complementarities, depth and breadth of the EC's food-security support, said the release.
Economic Relations Division (ERD) Secretary Aminul Islam Bhuiyan and Head of EC delegation to Bangladesh Ambassador Dr Stefan Frowein signed the agreement at the ERD office for the fund, which will be spent under the Food and Security Programme 2006 in Bangladesh during the next five years.
The overall objective of the food security programme is the reduction of extreme poverty and malnutrition in Bangladesh "by improving socio-economic condition of the very poor and by managing and improving food security in an effective way".
The programme is developed in line with the overall objectives of the EC's 2007-2013 Country Strategy Paper for Bangladesh, which focuses on reducing poverty and assisting Bangladesh's integration into the world economy.
An EC release on the agreement said the intervention would tackle several specific areas of food insecurity aimed at improving the availability, access and utilisation of food among vulnerable groups and strengthening the capacity of Bangladesh government.
The programme's main goals are - improvement in nutrition and educational performance of poor and ultra-poor primary schoolchildren in area with high levels of food security, setting up a sustainable national surveillance scheme to monitor nutrition indicators and providing high-quality statistical data related to food security.
The goals also include strengthening the implantation monitoring and evaluation capacity of a comprehensive, equitable and gender-sensitive pro-poor national food policy and action plan, promotion of optimal farming practices for enhanced production and access by vulnerable households of nutritious food through crop diversification and sustainable improvements in soil fertility.
"Although poverty rates in Bangladesh have gone down by about 10 percentage points since the early 1990s, it still has the third-highest absolute number of poor and malnourished people in the world, affecting almost half of its population. Women and children remain especially vulnerable," says the EC.
Since 1976 food aid, and more recently food security, has been a central area of EC interventions in Bangladesh. While the focus in the early 1990s was on food availability and agricultural production, the approach has evolved to food-security interventions supporting income generation, training and capacity building.
The shift in strategy of tackling food insecurity in Bangladesh has been set against the background of an increasing trend towards central (rice) self-sufficiency at a national level and the need to directly address sustainable development for the most vulnerable groups as well as improving Bangladesh's policy environment.
Parallel to the Food Security Programme 2006, the implementation of actions such as Vulnerable Group Development for Ultra-Poor (VGDUP), Rural Employment Opportunities for Public Assets (REOPA), Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Project (BDPP), Food Security for Sustainable Household Livelihoods (FOSHOL) project and others increase the complementarities, depth and breadth of the EC's food-security support, said the release.