THIS is heartening that the agro-processed food industry has expanded domestically faster than what it has done in export to global market. The overall processed food market, which now employs about 250,000 people, is reported to have grown to $8 billion in Bangladesh, at an annual growth rate of 8 per cent, accounting for about 1.7 per cent of the gross domestic product. The share of processed food in the total export revenue is about 3.5 per cent. Whilst the growth of the industry sounds encouraging, but the silver lining comes with some dark clouds. It has a couple of downsides that are bad for the economy and public health. The industry could fetch only $341.73 million in the 2023鈥�2024 financial year, up from $300 million in the 2016鈥�2017 financial year, despite such promising growth. The international processed food market was worth some $2.09 trillion in 2024. Agricultural food engineers put the domestic growth of the industry down to the absence of good agricultural and manufacturing practices, which stop the products from entering the global market, where the maintenance of certain regulations, standardisation and safety requirements from cultivation to manufacturing are a must.
Experts say that poor or even an absence of enforcement for food safety lies at the heart of the domestic growth and the failure on the international market. The domestic boon of the processed food industry that has been a bane for export has, therewith, also exposed consumers at home to unsafe processed food, which may have only burdened public health. The government appears to be in need of shoring up a number of issues as the processed food consumed domestically may not all be fully safe for consumption. The proposition warrants that the government should set some issues right because the government offers cash incentives, or export subsidies, for processed food export at the rate of 20 per cent to expand the narrow export basket before Bangladesh is set to graduate out of the bloc of least developed countries to become a developing country in November 2026. The government should, therefore, attend to health issues such as the overuse of pesticide and soil contamination with lead or microplastics in water that are said to be major hurdles to food safety. There are also allegations that the producers remain content with the domestic market expansion, in the absence of stringent food safety enforcement, rather than spending money on compliance that is needed for the export growth.
The Food Safety Authority, founded in 2013, still toddles with regulatory issues and is busy building its capacity more than a decade later. The agency has completed a capacity-building project and is going through another one. But food safety remains a far cry, both for the domestic and international markets. It is time that the government dealt with this early.