The long-awaited Plant Variety and Farmers’ Right Protection Act 2015, formulated to protect a country’s authority on plant varieties, is likely to be placed before the Cabinet for approval next month.
“We have finalised the draft after having several discussions with experts; it will be placed in the secretary-level meeting this month. Upon getting a a positive response from them, the draft act will be placed before the cabinet next month,” said Anwar Faruque, additional secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture.
The ministry prepared the proposed act in line with Bangladesh’s obligation to protect intellectual property rights under World Trade Organisation’s Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement and the International Convention on
Biological Diversity.
According to the draft, a Plant Variety and Farmers’ Rights Protection Authority will be established for issuing registration and licences to the breeders regarding newly developed plant varieties in the country.
As the act is implemented, the new developed varieties will be termed as protected varieties and breeders will get exclusive rights to commercial use of seeds of those varieties.
The draft also says that no one will be able to produce, reproduce, sell and market the seeds of the protected varieties without authorisation from the breeders, except the farmers who will not use the plants for commercial purpose.
Farmers will have the right to protect indigenous knowledge regarding the plants’ genetic resources and the right to get benefit if any of them use the resources, said Anwar, who is also the director general of the ministry’s Seed Wing.
However, the government in certain cases will be able to cancel breeders’ rights, though the draft law proposes 15 years to 20 years of protection rights to breeders of various types of plants.
In addition, the act will also specify the definition of farmers in Bangladesh to frame the rights of the community.
As per the agreement between Bangladesh and the WTO, the country was supposed to formulate the act by 2005.
Regarding this, the government had started to work on the act since 2002 and saw several obstacles in different stages due to the observation in secretarial and inter-ministerial meetings.
“We have fixed all the inconsistencies and accommodated the observations in the final draft and hope it will get the nod,” Anwar said.
Similarly as the plant variety protection act, the government formulated another act in 2013 titled Geographical Indication Act, to ensure patent rights for the country’s traditional products.
