It is heartening to know that government has taken up a project regarding agricultural machinery distribution to farmers. This project is expected to create a large market for agricultural machinery in the country, while government subsidise farmers in purchasing machinery and equipments. Consequently, local entrepreneurs are getting prepared for big investments in the sector.

In order to implement the project, Tk3, 020 crore farm mechanisation project will provide 52,000 agro equipments to farmers within 2025 at subsidised rates. Agricultural machineries, such as combine harvesters, reapers, transplanters, etc will be provided under the five-year agricultural mechanisation project that has started in fiscal 2020-21.

Our agriculture sector faces severe labour shortage, especially during harvest season. It’s time to modernise the agriculture sector and make it profitable by minimising cultivation costs, especially labour cost. Around 40 per cent labour force of the country is engaged in agriculture–while this sector contributes a little more than 14 per cent in GDP. Therefore, this sector is heavily labour incentive sector. With the introduction of mass use of advanced machinery, manual labour dependency of this sector will largely reduce.

However, there is a Tk30, 000 crore potential agricultural machinery market in Bangladesh. But the machinery being used now amounts to only Tk3, 000 crore. Currently, farmers in the country use power tillers and tractors for tilling about 95% of their land. The use of machinery has not increased in planting, harvesting or threshing. According to the Department of Agricultural Extension, planting machines are being used on only 1% of land and for harvesting and threshing the rate is 3%.

Needs be mentioned – the market for tractors and power tillers is import dependent. The market for small machinery manufactured by local entrepreneurs is only Tk300-Tk350 crore. Therefore, there is huge opportunity of investment in this sector. If the government’s farm mechanisation project is implemented, the market will get expanded. The agricultural mechanisation will also lead to development of backward and forward linkage industries that will create employment opportunities for many farm labourers.

Currently, most agricultural machines are being imported. We need to reduce this import dependence. The government should take initiatives so that our local factories can increase their capacity and manufacture heavy agricultural machineries. Since we are not yet technologically capable enough to manufacture heavy agricultural machinery domestically, we need to draw in foreign companies for investment.

The government has increased the subsidy allocation to Tk680 crore in the current fiscal year. Unfortunately, government’s subsidy programme has not gathered the expected momentum. That is why government should gear up initiatives so that the farm mechanisation avenue can attract investment from home and abroad and the farmers can get benefits of the projects as soon as possible.