After gross irregularities and corruption were uncovered in the Bangladesh government’s farm mechanization program, a decision has finally been taken to withhold the remaining Tk600 crore allocated for the project, and 25 agricultural officials have been suspended on charges of graft.
Speaking at an agricultural mechanization policy dialogue in the city on Tuesday, Agriculture Secretary Dr Mohammad Emdad Ullah Mian acknowledged the corruption in the ministry-administered farm mechanization program, worth over Tk3,000 crore. He said a nexus of government officials and machinery-selling companies had inflated prices by more than 100%, and many combined harvesters sold under the subsidized program could not even be traced.
“I was stunned to see the level of graft,” he said, adding that documents and evidence have been submitted to the Anti-Corruption Commission to bring the project director and other relevant officers of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) under investigation.
The Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) shared recent findings showing, on one hand, how Bangladesh’s farm mechanization drive helped propel the country’s agricultural sector, and on the other, how corruption and irregularities undermined its impact.
IFPRI Research Fellows Dr Mehrab Bakhtiar, Dr Moogdho Mehzab, and Dr Ben Belton presented various aspects of their research findings and offered recommendations to help ensure that future mechanization initiatives remain free of corruption.
Their study found that the number of machines recorded in government documents exceeded the actual imports, and field-level surveys revealed widespread irregularities in the distribution of subsidized farm machinery.
A handful of businesses that benefited from public subsidies sold combined harvesters at prices more than twice their actual import cost.
