The Cabinet yesterday approved in principle the draft of “The Agriculture Produce Markets Regulation Bill, 2018” toughening punishment for violation of the law.

The approval was given at the regular weekly meeting of the cabinet held at the Prime Minister's Office with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair.

After the meeting, Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam briefed reporters at the Secretariat.

He said the new draft bill has been proposed reorganising “The Warehouses Ordinance, 1959” and “The Agricultural Produce Markets Regulation Act, 1964” to make the existing law more time-befitting one.

Shafiul Alam said the aim of the proposed law is to give the National Agriculture Marketing Coordination Committee and three other committees working under the existing law a legal shape.

The three committees are District Agriculture Marketing Coordination Committee, Upazila Agriculture Marketing Coordination Committee and Market Based Management Committee.

According to the draft law, doing business in any notified market without having a licence or handing over licence of a agriculture trader to others for doing business will be considered as a punishable offence according to section 22 of the proposed law. For such an offence, Shafiul Alam said, there is a provision of a one-year jail term or Tk one lakh as fine in the proposed law instead of two months' imprisonment or Tk 2,000 as fine in the existing law.

The cabinet also gave the final approval to the draft of 'The Weight and Measurement Standard Bill, 2018' raising the amount of fine for violation of the law.

About the punishment, Shafiul Alam said, the punishment will be maximum one year's imprisonment or Tk one lakh as fine or both instead of the existing one year's jail and a Tk 10,000 fine for any irregularity on weight and measurement.

The Cabinet meeting also gave approval to the draft of 'The Bangladesh Muktijoddha Welfare Trust Act, 2018' subjected to vetting of the Law Ministry.

Besides, the cabinet endorsed the draft of the 'Government E-Mail Policy, 2018' under which public servants will have to use government's domain like gov.bd for official correspondence through email. The public servants cannot use personal email address for official purpose.

The cabinet was apprised of the first quarterly report of the Cabinet division on implementation of the cabinet's decision taken at the Cabinet meetings from January 2018- March 2018 period.

According to the report, 63 decisions taken in cabinet meetings during the period and of them 43 (68.25 pc) have been implemented, while the rest 20 (31.75 pc) decisions are underway to be implemented.

A total of 68.25 decisions taken in the cabinet from January 2018 to March 2018 have been implemented, but the rate of implementation of the cabinet decisions was 46.53 percent during the same period in 2017, said Shafiul Alam.

Meanwhile, the cabinet approved a proposal for ratification of 'The agreement signed between Bangladesh and Thailand on Visa Exemption for Diplomatic Passport Holders' retrospectively.