The government will conduct a survey on agriculture and rural statistics aiming to determine the household based socio-economic conditions of the country’s rural areas and collect information on women's empowerment.
The survey aims to collect information on ownership-based agricultural land, agricultural inputs and agricultural machineries, agricultural products price, credit utilisation related information, farm labour, and gender parity.
Once this survey is completed and based on the information of this survey, it will be possible to undertake and implement information-based and fruitful development plans in the agriculture and rural sectors, said a senior official at Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS).
Informatics and Statistics Division under the Ministry of Planning will implement a project to this end titled, ‘Agriculture and Rural Statistics Survey (ARSS) Project 2017" by next December (2018) with an estimated cost of Tk 39.8 million to be entirely borne from the state exchequer, reports BSS.
About 2,000 households, as primary sample units, will be brought under the survey.
Talking to the national news agency, another official at the Planning Ministry said the project was placed before the last ECNEC meeting held on Tuesday for its appraisal.
He said the survey will collect information on irrigation, fertiliser, seed, quarantine and pesticides used in agricultural production to further ensure accurate estimation and calculation of GDP.
Besides, information will be collected on farm labour and their working hours side by side on labour wage rate, the official said.
He said the contribution of the country's agricultural sector to the GDP is important as it accounts for around 15 per cent of GDP while the country’s around 72 per cent people live in the rural areas.
"So, the overall development of the country largely depends on the development of the large section of people living in the rural areas. Apart from this, more than 43 per cent of the country's labour force is also engaged in agriculture sector," the official said.
Earlier, on October 8 this year, Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal approved this project.