Meeting flood-induced contingencies
Thursday, 23 August 2007
This time of the year is no stranger to floods. However, the fury and severity of visitation by such calamities do not remain the same every year. Considering the area of land the flood submerged and the number of people it affected, the current deluge can also be bracketed with other deadly floods of the past.
Bangladesh being situated in a floodplain and visited by small and big floods recurrently, the government as well as the people has developed a natural reflex against the predictable onslaught of floods. So, this time, too, the flood could not catch the people and he government by surprise. Though participation of the humanitarian bodies and NGOs including various social and political bodies in the flood relief operation and rehabilitation work has been limited in scale due to understandable reasons, there is no denying that the government was swift in responding to the emergency caused by the flood.
However, to provide people with relief that include food, shelter and medicine when they are dislodged from their homes with the onslaught of rushing waters is only the beginning of the nightmare that gradually unfolds during an all-engulfing flood. The worst phase of a flood starts with the recession of the water thereby revealing the gashing wounds inflicted on the economy and the affected people's lives. In the case of the current flood, too, the wounds have started to show up in the form of damage to agriculture, communications, public health, education, infrastructures and embankments.
The government is now making the primary assessment of the damage inflicted on the economy in order to start the post-flood rehabilitation work. The initial assessment that the government presented at a meeting with the Local Consultative Group (LCG) of the donors was shown to be around half the damage the 2004 flood had done to the economy.
The aim of the meeting with the LCG was to seek an additional budgetary support worth US$150 million from the donor communities.
Understandably, this support is necessary to maintain macroeconomic stability and ensure that the government does not fail to achieve projected growth indicated in the last budget.
Meanwhile, the government has already diverted a large sum of budgetary allocation equivalent to .0.8 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a recovery measure against damage caused by the flood. Such diversion of budgetary fund to meet flood emergencies is liable to affect the expected economic growth, the poverty alleviation efforts and development work envisaged in the current financial year.
As expected, the sought after additional budgetary support from the donors is meant to help the government avoid increased bank borrowing to continue its development work as well as address other needs of the economy. In absence of such donor support the post-flood economic scenario of the country may look rather bleak in the face of ever-soaring prices of essentials, unrestrained inflationary trend and slowed-down economic growth.
While commending the fact that the government has been prompt in approaching the donor community to meet the contingencies forced upon the economy by the flood, one needs also to admit that the particular crisis that the economy has been thrown to in the present context is not entirely addressable only in monetary terms. In the post-flood rehabilitation work on such a massive scale, what comes even before the asked for fund is full mobilisation of the community. For it will not be wise to think that the government machinery alone will be able to carry out the work of rehabilitation work and recoup the flood-induced losses to the economy.
In the circumstances, the donor money, if and when it is available, should only go to injecting further impetus into the tempo of social mobilisation initiated by the government in overcoming the reverses the economy has suffered.
Bangladesh being situated in a floodplain and visited by small and big floods recurrently, the government as well as the people has developed a natural reflex against the predictable onslaught of floods. So, this time, too, the flood could not catch the people and he government by surprise. Though participation of the humanitarian bodies and NGOs including various social and political bodies in the flood relief operation and rehabilitation work has been limited in scale due to understandable reasons, there is no denying that the government was swift in responding to the emergency caused by the flood.
However, to provide people with relief that include food, shelter and medicine when they are dislodged from their homes with the onslaught of rushing waters is only the beginning of the nightmare that gradually unfolds during an all-engulfing flood. The worst phase of a flood starts with the recession of the water thereby revealing the gashing wounds inflicted on the economy and the affected people's lives. In the case of the current flood, too, the wounds have started to show up in the form of damage to agriculture, communications, public health, education, infrastructures and embankments.
The government is now making the primary assessment of the damage inflicted on the economy in order to start the post-flood rehabilitation work. The initial assessment that the government presented at a meeting with the Local Consultative Group (LCG) of the donors was shown to be around half the damage the 2004 flood had done to the economy.
The aim of the meeting with the LCG was to seek an additional budgetary support worth US$150 million from the donor communities.
Understandably, this support is necessary to maintain macroeconomic stability and ensure that the government does not fail to achieve projected growth indicated in the last budget.
Meanwhile, the government has already diverted a large sum of budgetary allocation equivalent to .0.8 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a recovery measure against damage caused by the flood. Such diversion of budgetary fund to meet flood emergencies is liable to affect the expected economic growth, the poverty alleviation efforts and development work envisaged in the current financial year.
As expected, the sought after additional budgetary support from the donors is meant to help the government avoid increased bank borrowing to continue its development work as well as address other needs of the economy. In absence of such donor support the post-flood economic scenario of the country may look rather bleak in the face of ever-soaring prices of essentials, unrestrained inflationary trend and slowed-down economic growth.
While commending the fact that the government has been prompt in approaching the donor community to meet the contingencies forced upon the economy by the flood, one needs also to admit that the particular crisis that the economy has been thrown to in the present context is not entirely addressable only in monetary terms. In the post-flood rehabilitation work on such a massive scale, what comes even before the asked for fund is full mobilisation of the community. For it will not be wise to think that the government machinery alone will be able to carry out the work of rehabilitation work and recoup the flood-induced losses to the economy.
In the circumstances, the donor money, if and when it is available, should only go to injecting further impetus into the tempo of social mobilisation initiated by the government in overcoming the reverses the economy has suffered.