The Ministry of Agriculture’s PARTNER project has made significant progress toward transforming the country’s agriculture into a modern, commercial and technology-driven sector in line with the developed world. The project is working to bring farmers under digital services, promote good agricultural practices, ensure food safety, support research, expand agricultural exports, and spread climate-resilient technology.
The Programme on Agricultural and Rural Transformation for Nutrition, Entrepreneurship and Resilience in Bangladesh (PARTNER), which began in July 2023, has achieved roughly 47 percent overall progress against its targeted results as of June this year.
The project, under the Ministry of Agriculture, has a total cost of roughly 69.11 billion taka. Funded by the World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the government of Bangladesh, it involves seven government agencies including the Department of Agricultural Extension. Its activities are being carried out across 64 districts and 495 upazilas in 14 agricultural regions of the country.
The project aims to establish 28,597 field schools, of which around 18,500 are currently active. Of 20,000 planned batches of farmer training on good agricultural practices, about 4,500 have been completed. Of 30 training batches for agricultural extension officers, 27 have been completed. Of 112 national and regional workshops, 31 have been held.
One of the project’s major initiatives is the farmer card. The plan is to bring 1 million farmers under the card this August and 4.7 million by the end of the year. A database of roughly 1.4 million farmers has already been prepared on a pilot basis. The plan is to eventually bring all of the country’s farmers under this card system.
Agriculture ministry officials say the farmer card will play an important role in easily delivering subsidies, loans, incentives and other government benefits to farmers. There are also plans to provide farmers with international debit cards through Sonali, Janata and Bangladesh Krishi banks.
PARTNER project coordinator Abul Kalam Azad said the project’s progress should not be assessed by spending rate alone. He said progress is measured based on achieving targets set by the World Bank and IFAD, and that by that measure, overall progress stood at roughly 47 percent as of June.
He said the project’s financing method is results-based, a model that has not previously been used for an agriculture-sector project in Bangladesh. Funds are disbursed by development partners only after verification that the specified results have been achieved.
The five-year project, running from July 2023 to June 2028, involves World Bank and IFAD loan agreements totaling $543 million. As of June 2026, disbursement claims totaling $252.71 million have been submitted against the project’s cumulative results — roughly 47 percent of the total contracted amount.
Azad said the project has set 24 results-based targets under 10 disbursement-linked indicators. Evidence of achievement against these targets is submitted by the project and then verified by an independent verification agency. Following verification, funds are disbursed by development partners at set rates. However, he said, some targets will require revising the project’s development project proposal (DPP).
Among these is a target to deliver digital agricultural services to 5 million farmers through the farmer card. There are also targets to certify around 1 million farmers and farms across 300,000 hectares of land under good agricultural practices, establish accredited laboratories, and increase the budgets of registered institutions by 10 percent annually.
He said these matters were reviewed during a joint World Bank-IFAD mid-term review mission held June 1-23. Both sides agreed on revising the DPP and resetting some targets during the review.
The coordinator said activities outside the development partners’ specified targets — particularly infrastructure and physical construction work — cannot begin without the DPP revision. He said the revision process is currently under way, and that spending project funds without the revision could create complications with future disbursements. He expressed hope that once the DPP revision is complete, the project’s other activities could also be finished within the set timeframe.