$15m FAO, UNDP project for agriculture dev

A 5 million dollar fund will be needed for the implementation of the first phase of the programme. UNDP will provide 3 million dollar and FAO will contribute 0.4 million dollar. The rest amount of 1.6 million will be provided by the government.

FAO representative in Bang-ladesh Ms But Thi Lan and Assistant Resident Representative of UNDP Shireen Kamal Sayeed said this at a meeting here yesterday with Agriculture Minister M K Anwar at his office.

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They said the organisations have made contacts with EU, Canadian CIDA, DANIDA and other development partners and got encouraging responses so that the second phase of the programme would be funded by the donors, a press release said.

Lan then handed over the Actionable Policy Brief (APB) of the Agriculture Sector Review (ASR) done by the joint initiatives of FAO, UNDP, DANIDA and the World Bank on the request of the Agriculture Ministry.

Welcoming the efforts made by FAO, UNDP and other development partners in developing agriculture, including furnishing ASR, M K Anwar said, we have got an excellent document about the past and present status of our agriculture and the ways to face the present and future challenges to give a big push in the sector.

He asked the officials to gather recommendations on the APB of the ASR from the concerned ministries. He also asked them to arrange an inter-ministerial consultation to finalise the strategy to implement the recommendations.

The FAO representative said, the AFPB contains immediate short and long-term strategy to implement. She said, development partners have also shown interest to participate in the implementation process, the press release added.

The minister said "we will have an exercise to prioritise the actions recommended in the APB" and said we have already done some ground works, including strengthening of BADC to increases its seed producing capacity and provide service to the private seed growers.