Agriculture Minister Dr M Abdur Razzaque urged the agricultural scientists to be more active in discovering different crop and fruit varieties as the country can reduce its dependency in importing different types of fruits.

“The crop scientists and researchers should be more active in this regard as the country can produce different types of exotic fruits to reduce its dependency in importing fruits,” he said.

“We have to reduce import dependency by innovating different types of fruits which are suitable for the country,” he added.

Drawing attention of the project directors of different projects of the ministry, Dr Razzaque said that the project money should be spent with transparency as the government money is ultimately belongs to the people.

Regarding the food production, he said since country’s population has been increasing and that’s why country’s food production should be enhanced according to assessing net demand of the food.

During 2021-22 fiscal year, the minister said the project implementation progress rate by the agriculture ministry is 24 percent while the national average is 18.60 percent as the agriculture ministry has been implementing a total of  70 projects with a net allocation of Taka 29.18 billion.   Additional Secretaries of the Agriculture Ministry Dr M Abdur Rauf, Kamalaranjan Das, Hasanuzzaman Kallol, Wahida Akhter, Balai Krishna Hajra, other senior officials, different organisation chiefs and project directors, among others, attended the meeting.

Senior Secretary to the Agriculture Ministry M Meshbahul Islam moderated the function.