Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) is going to implement a 3-years project on ‘Increasing Access to Finance for Farmers Organizations of Bangladesh’. The project aims to develop each FO’s capacity to access to value chains, markets, technical knowledge, information and financing through training and collective pilot activities. The project is financed by the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) under Missing Middle Initiative.

A Launching Workshop of this project is organized by FAO at BARC Auditorium on 13 May 2018. Her excellency Begum Matia Chowdhury, MP, Minister to the Ministry of Agriculture has grace the  inaugural session of the workshop as the Chief Guest.  Mr Fazle Kabir, Governor of Bangladesh Bank and Dr. Iftikhar Mostafa, GAFSP-MMI Coordinator, Washington were participated as Special Guest. The Inaugorial session was chaired by the Honble Senior Secretary Mr Mohammad Moinuddin Abdullah. Representative from development partners, academia, head of agencies and senior officials of government organizations, private sectors, print and electronic media and farmers organizations members were participated in the said workshop. Mr David Doolan, FAO Representative in Bangladesh has delivered welcome speech to the audience during inaugural session.

The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) was launched as part of the G20 initiative to support agriculture and food security.

It works with public and private sectors, donors and recipient countries, as well as multilateral institutions and civil society organizations (CSOs). It has two funding windows: the Public Sector Window (PuSW) and the Private Sector Window (PrSW).

Bangladesh received US$50 million for implementing Integrated Agricultural Productivity Project (IAPP) in 2011.

During 2015, the GAFSP has identified that entities like POs, smallholder farmer groups, and small and medium enterprises are currently not being sufficiently serviced by the Program. “GAFSP Missing Middle” refers to those entities like POs/ag-CSOs, which have largely been unable to directly access GAFSP funds to achieve GAFSP goals.

Bangladesh has been awarded this project at a two-stage competitive process. The project scales up successful initiatives promoting FOs that have emerged from results of the GAFSP-financed Integrated Agricultural Productivity Project (IAPP). The project will initially work with about 6 000 farmer members of some 45 FO supported by the IAPP, which have a minimum level of organizational cohesion and competence achieved to date.

At inaugural session, key note paper on MMI-Bangladesh was presented by Mr Kazi Md Shaiful Islam, Additional Director (Inputs), Department of Agricultural Extension and focal point for MMI from Ministry of Agriculture. Another Key note paper on “Financial Products of commercial banks for small and marginal farmers” was presented by Mr Md Shahid Reza, Joint Director, Agriculture Credit Department, Bangladesh Bank.