The StraightsTimes.com announces a fresh outbreak of H5N1 in Bangladesh:
Oct 19, 2008
Bangladesh finds more bird flu
DHAKA - BANGLADESH authorities said on Sunday they have detected fresh bird flu at a poultry farm four months after the deadly virus was last reported in the country.
Livestock department spokesman Salahuddin Khan said at least 300 birds were destroyed in a farm in the northern Naogaon district last week after the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza was detected.
The area of the outbreak is marked on the google map with the “A”.
A map from the CIA’s World Factbook on Bangladesh gives us an uncluttered look at Bangladesh along with its major waterways.
…many people are landless and forced to live on and cultivate flood-prone land; water-borne diseases prevalent in surface water; water pollution, especially of fishing areas, results from the use of commercial pesticides; ground water contaminated by naturally occurring arsenic; intermittent water shortages because of falling water tables in the northern and central parts of the country; soil degradation and erosion; deforestation; severe overpopulation.
Bangladesh covers an area slightly smaller than the size of the state of Iowa and roughly half the population of the entire United States live within its borders.
The economy has grown 5-6% over the past few years despite inefficient state-owned enterprises, delays in exploiting natural gas resources, insufficient power supplies, and slow implementation of economic reforms. Bangladesh remains a poor, overpopulated, and inefficiently-governed nation. Although more than half of GDP is generated through the service sector, nearly two-thirds of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the single-most-important product. Garment exports and remittances from Bangladeshis working overseas, mainly in the Middle East and East Asia, fuel economic growth.
Back to The
Straights Times article…
‘We have already taken extra surveillance measures across the country,’ he said. ‘Farmers have been told to step up bio-security.’
Mr Khan said the outbreak was the first in four months, with the virus becoming dormant at the onset of the summer but now coming back ahead of the cold season.
Officials said the outbreak was a warning for the country’s US$1.5 billion (S$2.2 billion) poultry industry.
Bangladesh was hit by bird flu in February 2007, and the virus made another comeback in January this year.
At the outbreak’s peak, some 50 of the country’s 64 districts were affected, and more than a million birds were slaughtered.
If we can safely assume Bangladesh was indeed successful in its eradication program for the January outbreak it is testament to extraordinary effort and determination in a country that has the degree of poverty it does.
Recent financial news from Bangladesh is at best “mixed” but certainly better than some. From The Daily Star:
Banks may suffer liquidity crunch
Star Business Report
Banks may face a liquidity constraint due to any delay in repayments from commodity importers for loans and manufacturers may incur losses because of a freefall in inventory value.
“Manufacturers who have huge stocks of commodities purchased earlier at higher prices will face losses because of falling prices. Such losses will affect repayments to banks,” said Mahmood Sattar, chairman of Association of Bankers Bangladesh, yesterday.
“If we cannot get repayments against our financing in time, we may suffer liquidity crunch,” he said.
Sattar’s remark exposed concerns that played out at a seminar on the global financial crisis and its probable fallout on Bangladesh.
Citibank NA organised the programme at its Motijheel office, where analysts observed that the country’s two biggest foreign exchange earners — exports and remittance inflows — might hurt if the world economic meltdown that tipped into a recession, prolonged.
The impact on Bangladesh’s economy will be minimal as its financial markets are insulated from the global financial markets, analysts said.
A thin portfolio investment in the stock market is another factor that helps Bangladesh remain free from any major shock.
Bangladesh may also benefit from the US recession as exporters generally export cheap garment items to the US more than the expensive ones. Higher labour costs in Bangladesh’s trade competitors in the segment may also help it gain a portion of the market, the analysts added.
Over the last three months, the prices of major commodities plummeted by almost half.
“Edible oil was bought between $1,000-$1,200 a tonne. But the current market price is almost half the amount. It has already increased our losses,” said Mohammad Abul Kalam, director of TK Group, one of the biggest edible oil importers.
There is a small silver lining: The decline in commodity prices raises the possibility of easing inflation.
“Inflation will come down in future,” said MA Taslim, chief executive officer of Bangladesh Foreign Trade Institute, who took part in yesterday’s programme. Reduced import costs will also help ease the pressure on the balance of payments, he said.
Zahid Hussain, a senior World Bank economist, however, said new policy dilemmas were likely to emerge if export earnings began to slow and currencies of Bangladesh’s competing countries depreciate.
Former ambassador Farooq Sobhan pointed to neighbouring countries such as India and said they had already depreciated their currencies to maintain a competitive edge over other countries for exports.
“Their exports are going to be more competitive than ours,” Sobhan said, adding that a competitive exchange rate is crucial for exporters.
The US is the largest single market for Bangladesh’s garments. “So the US economy is important to Bangladesh. We will see a long-term impact,” he said.
Finishing with The Straights Times…
Bangladesh’s poultry industry is one of the world’s largest, producing 220 million chickens and 37 million ducks annually.
Industry officials said the bird flu outbreak at its peak early this year led to closure of 40 per cent of the nation’s poultry farms and left half a million workers jobless.
To take another financial hit of this magnitude at this time would be frightful on a very human level, to say nothing of the macroeconomic, when every billion is meaningful overall. Perhaps Bangladesh, informed with its earlier outbreak, will respond with a rapidity that will obviate the earlier measures and their impact. One can hope.
SZ
