FAO and the Government of Bangladesh join forces to make public spending a key driver of agricultural productivity and prosperity

Policymakers and experts gather in Dhaka to track public expenditure and investments in food and agriculture and understand pathways to optimize them for agricultural transformation

Dhaka – The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Government of Bangladesh hosted a high-level technical workshop in Dhaka to lay the groundwork for a new portfolio of technical support aimed at accelerating the country’s agricultural sector transformation. This policy support leverages analytics from FAO’s Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme to compile and monitor public expenditure in the food and agriculture sector and find ways to optimizing such spending to accelerate Bangladesh’s agricultural transformation programme (ATP).

The two-day workshop brought together government officials, policymakers, and technical experts to share the preliminary findings of an analysis on public expenditure in Bangladesh's food and agriculture sector. Using these data-driven insights, the MAFAP programme will partner with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC), and other relevant institutions to track whether future spending aligns with the ATP pillars.

Dr. Mohammad Emdad Ullah Mian, secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Jiaoqun Shi, FAO Representative in Bangladesh were present at the workshop.

Dr. Mohammad Emdad Ullah Mian, secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, said: “As we navigate the complexities of evolving global challenges—climate change, economic shocks, trade disruptions, and technological transformations—effective policy monitoring and analysis have become critical". “FAO has been a longstanding and trusted partner of the Government of Bangladesh. They will collaborate in identifying ways on how public expenditures and investments can be optimized in the framework of the agricultural transformation that will empower farmers, enhance food security, and drive sustainable agricultural development", he added. He emphasized the MAFAP programme’s data-driven approach and renowned analytical methodology, which would help “ensure whether our policies are effective and sustainable or not”, adding that its policy analysis would be “invaluable”.

Jiaoqun Shi, FAO Representative in Bangladesh, said “FAO remains committed to supporting the Government of Bangladesh in strengthening its policy frameworks for sustainable agricultural sector”. He highlighted that the MAFAP programme can “play a pivotal role, offering a structured approach to assessing the effectiveness of food and agricultural policies and ensuring they are aligned with national development priorities”.

The workshop also includes a demonstration of the FAO’s Policy Optimization Modelling Tool (PolOpT) and how it could help the Government of Bangladesh maximize the impact of its food and agriculture spending. By optimizing the way in which existing budgetary resources are allocated across different policy support measures and subsectors with PolOpT, Bangladesh could stand to boost agrifood GDP, create more off-farm jobs in rural areas, lift more people out of poverty, and make healthy diets more affordable for all.

Deputy Director for Agrifood Economics and Policy at FAO and head of the MAFAP programme, Dr. Marco V. Sánchez, said “We are all on the same page here in Dhaka; that we need to not only monitor public spending on food and agriculture to track trends, but go a step further to optimize this government spending, so that every taka is spent more effectively for more jobs, higher agrifood output growth, less poverty, and more affordable healthy diets for the people of Bangladesh”. “This would be a pivotal step in Bangladesh’s agricultural transformation and the agrifood sector’s contribution to the rest of the economy, and FAO stands ready to support the government to make that happen”, he added.

Experts also saw how the tool will help Bangladesh to prioritize high-potential commodities for greatest socioeconomic impact by strategically allocating spending levels on areas such as extension services, fertilizers, irrigation, mechanization, R&D, and seeds.

During the workshop, stakeholders are going over preliminary results of MAFAP’s food and agriculture expenditure analysis and are actively participating in validating data with a view to fine-tuning key information to develop the policy analysis and prospective scenarios with PolOpT.

About the MAFAP Programme at FAO

The Monitoring and Analysing Food and Agricultural Policies (MAFAP) programme is a leading policy support programme at FAO that works with countries in Africa and South Asia to strategically prioritize, reform and implement food and agricultural policies. By monitoring and analysing public budgets and trade and market policies, MAFAP guides governments to repurpose their agricultural support to accelerate the transformation of agriculture and food systems. It also collaborates with policymakers to identify priorities for policy and investment reforms in key commodity value chains and supports implementation to ensure that changes create more nutritious food systems and inclusive mark