MAFAP to help Bangladesh on price incentives on onion, potato and rice
Starting in October, the ministry's Department of Agrocultural Marketing (DAM) will collect data on farm-gate and consumer prices for onion, potato and rice, which together make up around two-thirds of agriculture production value in Bangladesh.
Once the national data from the last ten years are complied, the team will then conduct an analysis to create commodity ‘dashboards’. The aim of the dashboards is to show how the policies currently in place affect the farm-gate and wholesale prices of these commodities.
This analysis will reveal whether the policies in place in Bangladesh have provided price incentives or disincentives over the 2014-2019 period. If there are price incentives for farmers to produce a commodity, this effectively means that the policies in place have translated to higher producer prices.
The dashboard and economic analyses for rice and onion will be particularly important for the South Asian country. It the second-biggest consumer of rice per capita in the world and rice accounts for 50% of agricultural GDP. Onion, a popular ingredient found in most dishes, is the second-most consumed vegetable in Bangladesh.
“A key dilemma of agricultural and food policies is managing trade-offs. Policies that protect producer prices often harm consumers through higher prices. Looking at how price incentives have evolved in Bangladesh over the period will provide a clearer picture of how these trade-offs have been managed and shed some light on some of the remaining bottlenecks that hamper the development of these value chains in Bangladesh”, says Francisco Fontes, Policy Analyst and MAFAP Focal Point for Bangladesh.
Based on the results of the analyses of the commodities, MAFAP and DAM will identify a set of policy issues for potential future collaboration. If and once these are agreed-upon, they will be prioritized according to the most urgent, impactful and beneficial. The prioritized reforms will ultimately address any bottlenecks in current food and agriculture policy that may be holding back progress towards agriculture development and sustainable and inclusive food systems.
The work will be carried out jointly with the Department of Agricultural Marketing within the Ministry of Agriculture of Bangladesh and in close collaboration with FAO’s Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge (MUCH) project.
Before the end of the collaboration in May 2021, the MAFAP team will also provide capacity development to the Ministry of Agriculture, upskilling ministry employees on data collection and management of data, calculation and interpretation of price incentives indictors.
Photo: ©FAO/Kazi Riasat.