Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury yesterday said farmers would continue to receive subsidies under the country’s own policy despite repeated criticisms from development partners.
“The country needs to provide more subsidies in the form of fertiliser and seed for farmers to ensure adequate food grain production,” she said while addressing a workshop on food and nutrition security options at Sonargaon Hotel in the capital yesterday.
The workshop was organised by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
As farmers got subsidies, the agriculture sector has ensured abundance of food, making it easy for the country to also export food, Matia said.
“We plan to export a limited amount of rice in Sri Lanka. Our annual subsidy amounts to around Tk12,000 crore that also includes cash in addition to fertiliser and seed,” she said.
Addressing the workshop, Food Minister Quamrul Islam said the country’s agricultural GDP had grown at more than 2% in the last two year and rice production grew from 29.8m tonnes to 33.8m tonnes in fiscal 2012-13.
The agriculture minister said Bangladesh, like other countries in the world, arranges subsidies for farmers using its own resources and it is totally absurd to make any negative comment on the country’s policy on subsidy.
Slamming the development partners, Matia said: “Bangladesh never comments on subsidies provided to farmers of their countries. Why they should ask us to reduce subsidy for our farmers?”
