Agriculture Minister seeks ADB support for packing house, lab in Purbachal
Bangladesh wants to export crops to international markets, he says
Agriculture Minister Abdur Razzaque today sought financial and technical assistance from Asian Development Bank (ADB) for the construction of a modern packing house and setting up a testing lab on 2 acres of land in Dhaka's Purbachal.
According to a ministry statement, he made the remarks after a meeting with ADB Country Director, Edimon Ginting, at the Secretariat this morning.
During the meeting, the minister emphasised Bangladesh's impressive success in agriculture.
"Bangladesh is self-sufficient in granular foods and has a lot of surplus crops. We want to take them to the international market, we want to export them," the minister said.
Bangladesh, however, lags behind in terms of exports and processing. Mango, pineapple, banana, tomato, potato, and vegetables have a lot of potential for export and processing in the country, and ADB's cooperation is required in this case, said the statement.
Ginting said that ADB would help develop the agriculture sector in Bangladesh's coastal areas and Chattogram hill tracts, export agricultural products from haor areas, improve irrigation efficiency, and strengthen the research sector.
Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, Md Ruhul Amin Talukder; Deputy Secretary Farhana Irish; ADB Deputy Country Director Jiangbo Ning; Head of External Relations Govind Bar; and Head of Portfolio Management Unit Tika Limbu were present during the meeting.
It was also mentioned that a project titled "Crop Commercialisation and Productivity Development" is being implemented with USD 50 million funding from the ADB. The project is scheduled to run from 2023 to 2028.
Earlier, under the Ministry of Agriculture, two projects on "Crop Diversification" have been implemented in the period 2001-2009 and 2010-2017 with the funding of ADB.