January 14, 2007	Sunday	Zilhaj 23, 1427

DHAKA, Jan 13: The Bangladesh exporters welcomed state of emergency in the country hoping it would end crippling strikes and blockades that have cost businesses in the impoverished country millions of dollars.

The business community has been hit hard by dozens of nationwide strikes, protests and blockades called by the Opposition to highlight alleged poll rigging by the outgoing government.

Losses have amounted to at least $70 million a day in a country where nearly half the 144 million population lives on less than a dollar a day, said business leaders.

“Over the last six months, the political instability has cost us millions of dollars in export orders. Our exports were on the brink of disaster,” said S.M. Fazlul Haque, president of Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), the country's biggest export group.

Textile exporters alone have said each day the country was shut down cost them $20 million with losses over the last three months totalling $500 million.

“During these non-stop strikes, the most worrying thing for us has been the loss of buyers' confidence that we worked hard to earn over the last few years,” said Fazlul Haq.

“We were flooded with calls from our buyers, demanding to know whether we can make the shipment in time because the strikes had shut down the port,” Haq said, adding some buyers had already cancelled their orders.

Products such as jeans, T-shirts and sweaters, are the country's best performing textile exports with earnings up to $3.8 billion over the last three years.

Haq said knitwear exports would double again in the next three years because of huge numbers of factories being added every month.

“In the last six months alone we saw a new knitwear factory being set up every two days.” But he said the strikes had left a question mark looming over the sector's growth.

Business groups also praised the president's choice of a former central bank governor as the new head of the caretaker government, saying it would be a boost to the business community.

During his tenure as the governor of the central bank, Mr. Ahmed introduced series of fiscal reforms that brought macro-economic stability in the country,” Anis-ul-Haq, a leading exporter said.

Bangladesh's economy has been growing at five per cent a year since the early 1990s, and by more than six per cent for the last three years, despite the country's difficulties.

Last month, the central bank revised up its forecast for economic growth this fiscal year to 7.1 per cent.—AFP