Sidr may imperil food security warn economists
Courtesy New Age 22/11/07
The effects of Sidr, last week’s devastating cyclone, may imperil food security at the household- and macro-levels and compel the government to spend a much higher amount of foreign exchange to import food-grain to meet the huge shortfall, say economists.
They forecast a negative impact of the deficiency of food-grain on the market prices and also said it would create a livelihood crisis in the cyclone-affected areas unless massive relief works and post-cyclone rehabilitation programmes are undertaken right now.
The cyclone damaged the standing Aman paddy, which is a major crop in 12 cyclone-affected southern districts —
‘The devastating cyclone, coming in the wake of prolonged floods, has dealt a severe blow to the livelihoods of a very large section of the population. The shortfall in the harvest of Aman rice will now be too large to be recouped by even a bumper Boro harvest,’ Wahiduddin Mahmud, a senior economist and former adviser to the caretaker government, told New Age on Wednesday.
Hossain Zillur Rahman, another vocal economist and executive chairman of Power and Participation Research Centre, termed the cyclone a humanitarian disaster. ‘It [cyclone] will have a variety of immediate and long-term implications for the national economy due to loss of the Aman crop, death of innumerable cattle and poultry and damage to shrimp farms,’ he said.
The agriculture department’s initial assessment shows that the cyclone damaged seven to ten lakh tonnes of the Aman crop. The target of Aman production was 1.24 crore tonnes against the year’s overall food-grain production target of 2.75 crore tonnes.
However, finance and planning adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam on Monday ruled out the possibility of crop-damage caused by the cyclone having any severe impact on the national economy. ‘Aman is not now the major crop in
‘If someone says it will not have a significant effect on food security, I will say s/he does not know the reality of either the country or the national economy. After all, agriculture is the mainstay of our economy and Aman, too, is a major crop,’ said Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, president of Bangladesh Economic Association, when he was asked to comment on the losses in the agriculture sector due to the ravages of the cyclone.
Also, the two recent floods damaged an estimated quantum of 12 lakh tonnes of crops, mostly Aman rice. The country has experienced a food-grain shortfall of 15 to 30 lakh tonnes in recent years. So official statistics suggest that the country may have to import 40 to 50 lakh tonnes of food-grain, worth up to Tk 12,000 crore.
Currently, the government has a buffer stock of food-grain amounting to only 7.35 lakh tonnes whereas the minimum requirement as per the national food policy is 10 lakh tonnes.
Against such a backdrop, economist Wahiduddin Mahmud predicted that in undertaking the post-cyclone rehabilitation programme, the government would be constrained by the already burgeoning budget deficit caused by subsidies for food, petroleum products and fertiliser, which alone might ‘cost the government exchequer up to Tk 9,000 crore without any price adjustment’.
He said that not only would there be shortfall in food supply, the people would also lack purchasing power. ‘Apart from immediate rehabilitation work, there will be a great need for providing employment opportunities and income-generating activities for the cyclone-affected people.’
Kholiquzzaman expressed the apprehension that even if the government imported an adequate quantity of food, it would be difficult to reach them to the households in remote areas because of inadequacy in the distribution system and the people’s purchasing capacity vis-à-vis the high prices.
He stressed the need for long-term income generation and agriculture rehabilitation programmes so that crop production could help the farmers to recover from their losses and overcome their vulnerabilities.
The economists underlined the need for correctly assessing the damage caused by the cyclone, and launching effective programmes to rebuild the physical infrastructure and providing the affected people with soft loans for investment in farming and reconstruction of their damaged houses.
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