Food Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque, addresses a special meeting of the governing board of SAARC Food Bank at a city hotel on Sunday.

Food Minister Dr Abdur Razzaque on Sunday sought cooperation from the SAARC member countries to make the SAARC Food Bank a real success.

The minister made the call while talking to reporters after attending the 5th special meeting of the governing board of SAARC Food Bank at a city hotel.

“Political promises have turned into a hollow as some issues relating to the food bank are yet to be settled,” the minister said.

Therefore, SAARC member nations should come forward to make it fully functional, he added.

Established in 2007, SAARC Food Bank aims to help the member states with food deficit to meet their emergency needs.

For this, every member state pledged to create a certain food reserve for the bank.

Abdur Razzaque also expressed dissatisfaction as prices of foods, concession rate and operational modalities are yet to be finalised for the food bank, since the member nations did not take any unilateral stance over those issues.

The cross-cutting issues will set an appropriate threshold for a member country to access the food bank resources as well as determining the prices and methods for movement and delivery of food grains.

Once the food bank becomes functional, it would open up new opportunities for the SAARC members during any emergency and production shortfall,” Dr Razzaque added. “Bangladesh can keep a reserve of 0.2 million tonnes of food grains, against its total capacity of 1.7 million tonnes,” he said.

A World Bank-funded project to build up a giant silo would increase the country’s food storage capacity in future, the minister added.

Presided over by Food Division Secretary Barun Dev Mitra, the opening session of the meeting was also attended by a representative of SAARC Secretary General and members of the governing board of SAARC Food Bank.

The Daily Sun/ Bangladesh/ 14th May 2012