On February 27, the IFPRI-Bangladesh community celebrated the opening of IFPRI’s Bangladesh Integrated Food Policy Research Program (BIFPRP) Dhaka office. During the opening ceremony, various leading IFPRI researchers in the country shared remarks commemorating the occasion. Dr. Akhter Ahmed, IFPRI Representative in Bangladesh, stated, “IFPRI has been working in Bangladesh for over 30 years. With the recent inauguration of the IFPRI-Bangladesh country office in October 2016 and the launch of this new project, I am enthusiastic that we will see even more innovative, collaborative research – within IFPRI and with other institutions – than we have seen before.” Dr. Shahidur Rashid, Senior Research Fellow and the Program Lead, highlighted that successful partnership and collaboration are central to the design of the Bangladesh Integrated Research Program. “I am excited about the prospects of working with a talented, multi-disciplinary team of experts from IFPRI and its global partners to address the evolving food policy challenges of a growing Bangladesh.”

At the ceremony, IFPRI’s longest-standing project in country – the Bangladesh Policy Research and Strategy Support Program (PRSSP) – was acknowledged for its significant support towards getting the program up and running. This event follows the project’s inception ceremony on December 6, 2016, which brought together a broad range of participants, including dignitaries from the Bangladesh government, World Bank, partner research institutions, and various media outlets.

BIFPRP is a five-year, World Bank-financed research component under the Ministry of Food’s Modern Food Storage Facilities Project. Together with the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and IFPRI, the program will inform the food value chain, public food stock management, disaster response, and price stabilization efforts using evidence-based research results. The program’s cross-cutting research activities will focus on a full spectrum of food policy considerations – storage and transport, market and policy analysis and capacity building and outreach. In addition to conducting collaborative research and analysis, the program is expected to enhance the capacity of officials and staff from the Ministry of Food and other relevant government institutions, so that the officials and staff can analyze and manage complex food policy issues.