The deadly cyclone that hit southern coastal Bangladesh last month destroyed 291 million dollars of Bangladesh's winter rice crop, the country's agriculture minister said Sunday. "The cyclone damaged standing paddy (rice) worth 20 billion taka (291 million dollars)," Agriculture Minister C.S Karim told state-run BSS news agency.
Cyclone Sidr smashed into the southern coastal districts of the delta nation on November 15, killing at least 3,200 people and leaving millions homeless or short of basic staples such as rice.
The cyclone follows damage to summer crops of rice and other food grains by heavy floods in July and August. As a result, Bangladesh faces a shortfall of 3.1 million metric tonnes to meet domestic demand in the year ending June 2008, Karim said.
To fill the gap, the government plans to import one million tonnes of food grains in the coming months on top of 1.1 million already imported and allow private firms to import an additional 900,000 tonnes, Karim said.
International donors have also pledged 500,000 tonnes of food aid in the wake of the cyclone, he said. Bangladesh think-tank, the Centre for Policy Dialogue, last week gave an initial cyclone damage estimate of more than 1.5 billion dollars and said economic growth would slow as a result.
"We think growth will slow down to somewhere between five and six percent as a result of the floods and the cyclone," the centre's executive director Mustafizur Rahman said.
Bangladesh's 69-billion-dollar economy was projected to grow at seven percent in the year ending June 2008. But even before the cyclone, the floods had forced the central bank to lower its growth forecast to 6.5 percent. The economy expanded at a record 6.6 percent last year.
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