NEW DELHI: April 30: Governments of both Bangladesh and India have to work pro-actively to remove different regulatory barriers to rice seeds trade between two countries.

Moreover, both the countries should extend cooperation in the area of agriculture by sharing knowledge and technology.

These suggestions came at a meeting titled "Trade and knowledge sharing in HYV Rice Seeds: Scope for Agriculture Cooperation between Bangladesh and India" in New Delhi on Thursday.

Responding to the suggestions, Rajesh Kumar Singh, a joint secretary of Indian agriculture ministry, said that informal trade in rice seeds took place due to different regulatory barriers.

"We are now trying to address the barriers and the process of notification on Bangladeshi rice seeds in India has already eased. So far, 6 Bangladeshi varieties have been notified in India," added Mr Singh.

He, however, said that issues like SPS (sanitary & phytosanitary) measures and quarantine were there and it would take time to resolve.

Mr Singh also stressed on involving the private sector to make bilateral trade effective.

Salahuddin Noman Chowdhury, deputy high commissioner of Bangladesh High Commission in New Delhi, said that political will was there to extend bilateral cooperation and so addressing the barriers to rice seed trade was not a big problem.

Mr Chowdhury also said that high-yielding rice was important to address the food security in the two countries as well as in South Asia.

AK Enamul Haque, professor of East-West University of Bangladesh, said that formal trade would reduce the risk of using bad quality seeds.

Bipul Chatterjee, deputy executive director of CUTS, said that Bangladesh, India and Nepal had already signed agreements to facilitate formal trade in rice

seeds. "Now it is time for action and private sector has to play active role," he added.

Suresh P Singh, Policy Analyst at CUTS International, and Mahfuz Kabir, Senior Research Fellow, Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS), presented different aspects of informal rice seed trade between Bangladesh and four states of India, namely West Bengal, Bihar, Odishsa and Jharkhand.

Their study showed that Bangladeshi varieties like BR-11, BRRI Dhan-28 and BRRI Dhan-29 were popular in Indian states while Indian varieties like Swarna, Parija and Miniket were popular in northern parts of Bangladesh.

The study was conducted under the RISTE project supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

They also said that the private sector had to play a critical role to formalise the trade and make the recently-signed protocol agreement between Bangladesh, India and Nepal a success.

Professor Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), in his presentation on the scope of bilateral agricultural cooperation stressed on joint efforts to address the issues of technological progress, commercialisation of agriculture and multilateral trade regime. He also stressed on protecting consumer interests.  

The economist also mentioned different sides of Bangladesh-India bilateral trade and said that Bangladesh was exporting many products to developed countries but not to India. "It implies that Bangladesh has supply-side capacity for many products which India is not importing," he added.

In the meeting a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Bangladesh Seeds Association (BSA) and the National Seed Association of India (NSAI) was signed.

Syed AKM Asadul Amin Dadan, General Secretary of BSA, and Kalyan Goswami, Executive Director of NSAI, signed the MoU in presence of more than 50 participants representing Indian and Bangladeshi seeds companies, research organisations, NGOs, academia and media.

This MoU will help traders, exporters and importers of both the countries to initiate the cross-border trade in HYV rice seeds. It will also enable a favourable environment for knowledge-sharing in HYV rice seeds production and trade.

    asjadulk@gmail.com