Farm output rises despite wafer-thin slice off budget

If statistics provided in the finance minister's budget speech are something to go by, the country's food grain production has increased by two million tonnes since 2012-13.

However, budgetary allocation for the agriculture sector during the same period got shrunken to less than half, in terms of the percentage of allocation the agriculture ministry received from the national budget.

The thin slice of agricultural allocation in the jumbo budget cake is only getting thinner year by year.

According to AMA Muhith's budget speech at parliament yesterday, farmers grew over 37 million tonnes of food grain in 2012-13. Four years down the line, the production is projected at 39 million tonnes in the outgoing fiscal year, with the prospect of further growth in FY 2016-17.

But the government's budgetary allocation for agriculture ministry dwindled from a good 8.50 percent of the total outlay in 2012-13 to 4.21 in the revised budget of the current fiscal. And yesterday, the finance minister proposed only 4.01 percent allocation for the agriculture ministry.

The government also proposed to keep aside Tk 9,000 crore as subsidy, something it consistently did over the past few years despite fall in fertiliser prices in the international markets.

Experts, however, note that government needs to invest more and devise measures so that farmers don't stop cultivating paddy because of continuous slump in its prices.

As an apparent and immediate bailout measure, the finance minister proposed to slap a 25 percent customs duty, in place of the current 10 percent, on rice import. This would cushion local growers against cheaper imports from India.

Dr M Asaduzzaman, a professorial fellow at the country's premier think-tank Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (Bids), holds a different opinion though.

"Hiking duty, protecting local rice growers - this is all good. But timing is equally important here. Those who were up for making quick money through cheap rice imports have already pocketed the money at the cost of local farmers' misery," reasoned Dr Asaduzzaman, casting doubt on efficacy of the duty measure now.

He rather emphasised on more investment in agricultural research and development, shifting rice-centric farm production paradigm to a more diversified and pragmatic one.

For real food sovereignty, the expert notes, "per-unit productivity" has to be enhanced at a level when "we can release land from rice to other farm products. We need to invest more in fisheries and livestock."

Projecting successes in agriculture in his speech, Muhith yesterday said that the agricultural production has increased in real term by 2.6 percent compared to that of the last fiscal year. "Besides, we have taken initiatives to transfer cash and other incentives directly to the farmers through mobile banking."

"This year also, Bangladesh retains the 4th position in freshwater fish production. At the same time, nutrition demand of the population is being met by ensuring growth in production of milk, meat and egg, and increase in the per capita availability of these products," said the finance minister.

He spoke of increased food storage capacity and implementation of projects to turn the food-deficit regions into surplus ones, and proposed a few more duty structures like doubling customs duty (to 10 percent from the existing 5) on soy cake import and reducing supplementary duty to half (to 10 percent from 20) on 'stabiliser for milk' to give supports to the local agro-based industries.