City Desk :
A steering committee meeting on “Phytosanitary Trade Compliance in Bangladesh”, a project supported by APAARI, USDA and USAID, was held in a city hotel recently to set a complete and an independent “National Plant Protection Authority” in the country. In this regard, the steering committee members also made a discussion with the Inter-governmental Committee of Plant Quarantine Facilities (ICPQF) members, a press release said on Friday.
To establish the “National Plant Protection Organization (NPPO)” in the
country, the members emphasized on an integrated management system among all concerned departments and wings of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) as well as the Ministry of Commerce including all related public and private stakeholders at institutional level, the press release added, reports BSS. The WTO-SPS International Standards and Rules would be possible to maintain if Bangladesh come forward to strengthen their NPPO. To enhance the trade of agricultural products at the United States and global markets in a sustainable manner, the WTO specified Standards and Rules need to be followed by Bangladesh under its SPS Agreement with WTO, the discussants added.
Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI) Executive Secretary Dr Ravi Khetarpal and Project Manager and Senior Consultant Dr KS Varaprasad, DG of the DAE Md Benojir Alam and Joint Secretary (IC) Ministry of Agriculture Tajkera Khatun, Joint Secretary and Director-3 WTO-Cell, Ministry of Commerce Farhana Iris, Member Director (Planning and Evaluation) of BARC Dr Md Abdus Salam, Director PQW Dr Syed Md Rafiqul Amin and Director In-charge PPW Md Emdad Hossain Sheikh of the DAE, Dr S N Sushil Principal Scientist and Ex Plant Protection Advisor of the Government of India, Michael J Parr Bangladesh Trade Facilitation Project, Land O’Lakes, Project Management Specialist Mehedi Hasan of USAID, Tanvir Ahmed of USDA FAS, former DG of the DAE Md Asadullah, SPS Bangladesh Project Coordinator Dr AhsanUllah and other concerned high officials of the DAE and MoA attended the meeting.
Earlier, APAARI Executive Secretary Dr Ravi Khetarpal met with the Minister of Agriculture Dr Muhammad Abdur Razzaque to discuss on how to boost Bangladeshi Agricultural Trade by compliance to SPS Agreement of WTO and also briefed him on USDA FAS outputs and the need to establish a National Plant Quarantine Authority.
