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Tk 350cr food depot project planned

Big procurement needs big storage

Shamim Ashraf
The government is embarking on a Tk 350 crore-project to construct more food depots and increase the capacity of the existing ones in the northern part of the country, home to the major rice produce, in the coming fiscal year.
The capacity of the depots in Rajshahi division remains only 4 lakh metric tons, whereas the government this year has set a procurement target of 9.06 lakh metric tons for Boro paddy and rice from the region
The total targeted procurement of Boro between April and August this year is 12 lakh metric tons.
As an immediate solution to the problem,, the food and disaster management ministry has instructed government officials to repair the fertiliser depots of BADC (Bangladesh Agriculture Development Corporation), which are lyingunused.
"We've already started selecting spaces for the new depots," Food and Disaster Management Adviser AMM Shawkat Ali told The Daily Star yesterday confirming the government move to start a new project.
Once built, the new depots will increase the storage of the northern region depots by 2 lakh metric tons more, the food adviser estimated.
The government would not acquire any land for the new depots since the process would require a long time.The new depots will be built on available lands beside the existing food depots and
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lands donated by local people.
Businessmen of Dupchachia upazila in Bogra pledged to the food adviser to donate 1 acre of land for building a depot during the adviser's May 12-13 visit to Bogra, Naogaon and Natore to see Boro procurement.
Besides, locals of Zamurhat in Shibganj upazila of the same district also committed to give 99 decimals of land.
"If the unused BADC fertiliser depots cannot be converted into food depots due to their dilapidated condition, we'll demolish those and put up new depots there," the food adviser said.
At present, the government has some 600 LSDs (local supply depots) and eight CSDs (central supply depots) with the capacity of storing 15 lakh metric tons of rice, Pius Costa, director general of Directorate of Food, told The Daily Star.
Besides, there are four silos with the capacity to stock up around 3 lakh metric tons wheat, he added.
Since the Rajshahi division does not have enough storage space, the government usually transport the additional food grains to other regions for storage.
"If we can now find storage space in the region, we'll not have to worry about transporting all these rice to other parts of the country, only to be shipped to another region later for safety net or other programmes,” a food and disaster management ministry official toldThe DailyStar.