Export of processed food: Improving quality is main challenge

There were times when Bangladesh would face food shortage. People in the northern districts suffered from ‘Monga’, acute scarcity of food, in several months every year. The time is long gone now. Nobody dies of starvation in the country these days.

Bangladesh is now self-sufficient in food production. This ‘sufficiency’ is only in terms of rice production though. Rice productions increased due to significant innovations, which helped meet the demand of rice despite the population grew more than double in nearly five decades since the liberation. Yet, there are shortages of many food items in the country due to the demands because of the high purchasing capacity of people, thanks to economic growth and rise in their income.

Bangladesh imports a number of food items to meet the growing demands. At the same time, it exports many food items to various countries and the volume of export is expected to be increased near future.

The organisation of the food processing companies in the country, Bangladesh Agro Processors Association (BAPA) in a three-day international exhibition of processed foods in Dhaka anticipated increasing its exports to 1 billion US dollar in the next two years. The anticipation seems to be realistic in line with the growing trend of export of food items in the last few years.

According to Export Promotion Bureau (EPB), exports of processed food items from Bangladesh increased by 81 per cent in the past two years. Bangladesh earned over $707 million from food exports in 2018-19 fiscal. It is possible to earn USD 1 billion by 2021 if this trend goes on.

Among the processed food items, there are bread, biscuit, various snacks, fruit juice and other beverage, spice, jam and jelly that Bangladesh exports to countries mainly in India, Nepal, Bhutan, Middle East and in a few African countries. Also, these products are being exported to several countries in Europe and America. Expatriate Bangladeshis and Asian people are the major consumers.

Our export earnings may boost up if the products can be placed into the European and American markets. For this we need to increase the quality of food products to such a level so that those can compete with the existing food items in the US and European markets.

This is the main challenge. We have already faced stiff challenges to maintain the quality of mango, potato and a few other agro products in several European countries and could not succeed. Our products could not surpass the quality tests due to excessive use of chemical fertilisers and insecticides. Processed food items are also a kind of agro product. That’s why we must immediately decrease the use of all kinds of poisonous elements in agriculture.

The safety measures have to be ensured in every step of the production of processed food items including setting up of world class factories, use of cutting edge technology in packaging, preserving and supplying. Same has to be done for the local consumers as well.