An Rs 250 crore fund has been created in Assam by multiple stakeholders, including World Bank, to promote small and medium units in the agriculture sector, officials said on Tuesday. Venture capital fund Caspian Impact Investment Adviser said it has joined hands with the Assam Rural Infrastructure and Agricultural Services (ARIAS) Society to roll out the agribusiness investment firm.  The Hyderabad-based company said that according to the agreement, ARIAS will be the nodal agency for establishing and implementing a contributory and determinate investment trust — the Assam Agribusiness Investment Fund (AAIF). “With a corpus of Rs 250 crore, AAIF is a unique sector-specific fund, focusing on boosting agricultural productivity and employment generation in the state.  It will mainly invest in small and medium enterprises in the agribusiness and allied sectors to achieve accelerated growth,” it said in a statement. ARIAS is designated as the anchor investor for the AAIF, which will be managed by Caspian Equity as the fund manager. Commenting on the development, Caspian Impact Investment Adviser Executive Director and CEO Saurabh Johri said: “We are delighted to collaborate with ARIAS in our shared mission to catalyse the economic development of Assam’s rural communities.  By combining our investment expertise with ARIAS’ deep-rooted knowledge and experience, we aim to make a sustainable impact and empower individuals to thrive.” Caspian Investment Director Ravi Narasimham will lead the fund and the company looks forward to building a partnership with ARIAS to enable the creation of a prosperous and empowered rural community, he added. ARIAS Society Chairman Ashish Kumar Bhutani said, “AAIF is a unique and first-of-its-kind state-led initiative that aims to address the critical gaps in value chain finance in the agriculture and allied sectors and help increase farmers’ income.”  World Bank Group Finance Sector Specialist Toshiaki Ono said that agribusiness SMEs play a vital role in this transformation but external finance, especially long-term and patient capital for their growth, is extremely limited. “We are confident that the Fund will support high-growth and high-impact agribusiness SMEs for vibrant and resilient agri-food value chains in Assam,” he added. Source: assamtribune.com

Bangladesh witnessed a healthy growth trend in the export of agricultural products during the July-November period of current fiscal year (FY22), fetching $556.46 million.   The export of agricultural products sees a 24.37 percent growth during this five-month period compared to the same period of the previous fiscal year (FY21).   The export of agricultural products during the July-November period of the last fiscal year was $447.42 million, according to the latest statistics of the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB).   Such export of agri products crossed the $1 billion landmark for the first time in the last fiscal year while such healthy trend is also continuing in the current fiscal year.   The government has set a target of exporting $1,109.20 million from agricultural products in the current fiscal year.   According to the EPB statistics, the notable exportable items include vegetables, tea, flower, fruits, various types of spices, tobacco and dry food.   But, out of those, Bangladesh has attained notable progress in export of dry food. These include biscuits, chanachur, cakes, potato crackers and pea nuts.    Bangladesh Agro Processors Association (BAPA) said the processed food items enjoyed the lion share of $1 billion agricultural products exports in the last fiscal year.   Some 500 industries in the country are related to the processing of agricultural products while 20 of those are large and medium industries and 100 of those are related to export.   Talking to BSS, Commerce Secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh said that the government has been providing tax rebate and 20 percent cash incentives on export of agricultural and processed food.   As a result, the export of agricultural goods has been witnessing uptrend over the last four years.    "The entrepreneurs of this sector have started exporting newer items considering the demand of the global market which is also putting a positive  impact on the export volume," the secretary said.   Tapan said due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for agricultural and processed food has increased globally.    "The government wants the entrepreneurs to seize this opportunity and the government will extend necessary support in this regard," he said.   The notable exportable processed food items include bread, biscuits, dry food, fruit juice, various types of spices, soft drinks and jam, jelly.   Out of those, the local companies fetched $88.6 million from the export of bread and dry food during the July-November period of the current fiscal year.   The main export destinations of Bangladeshi agricultural items are European Union, Middle East and Gulf region while the expatriate Bangladeshis and the South Asian nationals living in those countries are the major consumers of such products.   Bangladeshi processed foods are being exported to some 145 countries of the world.   Among the local conglomerates, PRAN Group has been performing largely as well as they exported items worth $340 million in the last fiscal year. After beginning their export in 1997 to France, PRAN Group's export destinations has now expanded up to 145 countries.   The major exportable items of PRAN Group are fruit drinks, soft drinks, biscuits, sauce, noodles, jelly, spices, aromatic rice, potato crackers, chanachur, spicy puffed rice.   Talking to BSS, Director (Marketing) of PRAN RFL Group Kamruzzaman Kamal said that many people around the world have brought changes in their food habit due to the pandemic.    "As a result, people are now diverting to cost-efficient food like dry food. For this, the export of agricultural products crossed $1 billion mark in the last fiscal year," he said.   Apart from technological advancement as well as production of quality products, the government's policy support like tax rebate and cash incentives  are playing an important role in export boom of agricultural products, he added.   Noting that the export of processed food would increase in the coming days, he said considering this the farmers of the country would have to be more  production oriented to boost export.   Kamal said various tariff and non-tariff barriers are still there in the way of exports while strong government initiatives are needed to address those. Source: BSS AH

Millions of farmers in India will benefit from the country’s new farm laws, an Australian-based scholar who advised against listening to activists said. In an article for Foreign Policy, Salvatore Babones an adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney said that India’s rich farmers are holding up reforms designed to help the poor. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered the farmers limited price supports but held the line on loan waivers. Instead, he promised to implement structural reforms after the election. The opposition Indian National Congress countered with a promise to “waive all farm loans” across the entire country–an expensive solution decried by economists as a populist magic wand,” he wrote. “Despite what activists and Western celebrities supporting the protests would have us believe, most of those who’ve been protesting the new laws since September aren’t drawn from the ranks of marginalized subsistence farmers driven by debt and despair to the edge of suicide,” the scholar added. Babones stated that these farmers fear that the laws will help large agribusinesses undermine the current state-directed system for buying farm produce and ultimately lead to the dismantling of the price support system on which they depend. They are demanding that the government repeal the reforms and guarantee the future of price supports. “The overall goal of the reforms is to transform Indian agriculture from a locally managed rural economy into a modern national industry. They will allow small farmers to specialize in niche crops that can be marketed nationwide through large-scale wholesalers. They will also create new risks, as farmers are transformed into an entrepreneur,” according to his article on Foreign Policy. He stated that when authoritative Western media outlets “uncritically buy into the poor farmers” narrative, the result is pure misinformation. Articles suggesting that the BJP’s new farm laws threaten the livelihoods of as many as 800 million people must wrestle with the reality that in a country where 52 per cent of the working population is engaged in agriculture, only 6 per cent of the population actively disapprove of Modi’s performance in office. Source: midpoint AH