The government has targeted 33.43 million tons of food grain production, mainly rice and wheat, in the current fiscal year (July 2008-June 2009) against an estimated production of 28.99 million tons in 2007-08 fiscal year, they said.

Senior spokesman of the Bangladeshi Agriculture Ministry Abdullah-Al-Shahin told Xinhua on Monday, "We hope to reach the food production target as reduction of agricultural inputs prices encouraged more farmers to go for food grain production."

"Climatic conditions which remained so far favorable can also help us to reach the target," he said.

The Bangladeshi government last month almost halved prices of some widely-applied non-urea fertilizers aiming to help farmers reduce their cost of agricultural production.

Earlier, in another move to reduce the agricultural prices, the government also cut the prices of diesel which is widely used by farmers for irrigation.

Meanwhile, the overall growth in the agriculture sector output in 2008-09 fiscal year is projected to be in the range of 3.8-4.0 percent, the central bank of Bangladesh said in its quarterly outlook (October-December 2008) released recently.

A senior official of the central bank said the outlook is good as there is so far benign weather condition in the country, with the authorities facilitating timely availability of inputs at reduced prices.

Bangladesh's agricultural sector shares over 21 percent of the country's GDP.