Agriculture Minister and Awami League presidium member Dr. Muhammad Abdur Razzaque said that the country has a lot of potentials to export vegetables, potatoes, and fruits. The government now has a surplus in various crops and food. So the government wants to export this surplus crop all over the world.
Therefore, the government is working relentlessly to remove export barriers. Already the preparations are almost over. In the last year, the export of agricultural products has increased many times. The volume of exports will increase further in the coming days.
The minister was speaking as the chief guest at a views-exchange meeting on a draft roadmap for increasing exports of vegetables, potatoes, fruits, and processed agricultural products at the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) auditorium at Farmgate in Dhaka on Monday.
The Ministry of Agriculture formed a committee last June to increase exports of agricultural products. This committee prepared a total of two roadmaps for the export of vegetables, fruits and one for the export of potatoes.
The meeting was chaired by the senior secretary of the Ministry of AgricultureMesbahul Islam. He said increasing exports of agricultural products would benefit farmers on the one hand and earn a lot of foreign exchange on the other. The Ministry of Agriculture is working towards this.
Director-General of the Department of Agricultural Marketing Mohammad Yusuf, Executive Chairman of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council Dr. Sheikh Mohammad Bakhtiyar, Director General of the Department of Agricultural Extension Asadullah, and Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation Chairman Amitabh Sarkar was present at the meeting. During the time of the meeting, representatives of various ministries, departments, exporters, processors, and farmers exchanged views.
At the time, the Deputy Director of the Department of Agricultural Marketing, Dr. Mohammad Raju Ahmed presented a draft roadmap to increase the export of vegetables, fruits, and processed agricultural products. The chief coordinator of the research cell of the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation, Dr. Md Rezaul Karim presented the draft roadmap prepared to increase potato exports.
In the presentation of the draft roadmap, they identified the major problems in increasing the export of vegetables, potatoes, fruits, and processed agricultural products and made several recommendations to address them. If these recommendations are implemented, it will be possible to earn 1.634 billion US dollars (potential) in 2021-22 and 2 billion US dollars (potential) in 2022-23 (until June). In the case of potato export, it is possible to export 80,000 tons in 2022, 120,000 tons in 2023, 180,000 tons in 2024, and 250,000 tons in 2025, according to the draft roadmap.