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Dhaka, 11 December, 2007: The Government today successfully completed negotiations with the World Bank for a US$ 62.6 million interest-free credit from the International Development Association to increase agricultural productivity and farm income by improving the performance of the national agriculture technology system.
Shahidul Haque, Additional Secretary, Economic Relations Division and Paul Sidhu, Task Team Leader, World Bank, led the Government and the IDA delegations, respectively, in the two-day negotiations that began here on Monday.
The estimated cost of this project is US$ 84.6 million, of which the IDA will provide 62.6 million. The credit from IDA, the World Bank’s concessionary arm, has 40 years to maturity with a 10-year grace period; and it carries a service charge of 0.75 percent only. International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) will also provide US$ 19.4 million while the Government’s own contribution will be US$ 2.6 million.
The World Bank intends to use Adaptable Program Lending (APL) to support this Government initiative. APL is a flexible instrument with long-term approach and will be used for next 15 years in three phases and each phase will be of five year duration with clearly defined performance targets.
The proposed National Agriculture Technology Project (NATP) is designed to promote the generation, dissemination, adoption and use of appropriate agricultural technologies through a number of policy reforms, institutional development and investment to support agricultural research, extension and supply chain development.
The NATP will have three components: a) Agriculture research support, b) Agriculture extension support, and c) Development of supply chains. The idea of linking research, extension, farmers and market would remain the central focus of this proposed program.
Under agriculture research support, the Government will operationalise an autonomous Krishi Gobeshana Foundation to manage the Competitive Grants Program to undertake problem-solving cross-cutting agricultural research on selected priority themes in a pluralistic framework. It also aims to enhance institutional efficiency of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) and agriculture research institutes.
Decentralization of extension service, strengthening of research-extension-farmer linkages are envisaged under the agriculture extension support component. The development of supply chains will focus on strengthening farmer-market linkages, knowledge management and human resources development.
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