A two day meeting of the governing board of the SAARC Food bank began in Dhaka on Wednesday. Addressing the inaugural session of the meeting, Bangladesh minister for Food and Disaster Management Dr. Abdur Razzaque stressed on the need to reorient food security strategies and greater co-operation between South Asian countries to strengthen the SAARC Food bank initiative.Dr. Razzaque asserted that the SAARC Food bank if effectively operationalised will open a window of opportunity to help the member countries to tackle shortfalls in production and meet the requirements in times of emergencies arising from drought, flood and other natural calamities.The two day meeting will focus on various issues related to the functioning of the SAARC food Bank like operational guidelines relating to speedy movement and delivery systems. In addition to this the governing board meeting is also likely to take a view on increasing the food stock levels from the present 2,40,000 tonnes to 400,000 tonnes and setting appropriate threshold levels to access the food bank and fixing of prices for the food grains.