Asia-Pacific News
FAO: Myanmar needs 243 million dollars in agricultural aid
By DPA
May 14, 2008, 11:16 GMT

Bangkok - Myanmar's cyclone-devastated Irrawaddy Delta - the country's rice bowl - will need more than 200 million dollars in agricultural aid soon to prevent a severe food shortage this year and next, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Wednesday.

'Every dollar spent now on agriculture will save 10 dollars in food aid next year,' predicted FAO spokesman Diderik de Vleschauwer.

The Myanmar government on Tuesday told the FAO it will need about 243 million dollars to purchase rice seeds, fertilizers and to rehabilitate paddy embarkments and irrigation systems in the Irrawaddy Delta to ready it for the main rice crop in the monsoon season, which has already started.

The Irrawaddy Delta account for an estimated 60 per cent of Myanmar's annual rice crop.

Cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar's central coast on May 2-3 packing 200-kilometre-per-hour winds, killed an estimated 100,000 people, left up to 2 million in need of food, water, shelter and medicines and ruined much of the agricultural infrastructure in the delta.

The storm hit when farmers had already harvested the smaller winter crop, but many had not yet started planting the main monsoon crop.

'But whatever they had stored for consumption and for seed, that's gone,' said Vledchauwer.

He said the FAO would be conducting its own assessment of the amount of aid needed in the coming week and was likely to issue an international appeal within the next three weeks.

Besides agriculture, the Myanmar government estimated it will need another 20 million dollars in aid to restore livestock in the Irrawaddy Delta.

The aid for the region's destroyed fisheries could not be estimated.

'For fisheries we have not received an estimate but it is going to be huge,' predicted Vledchauwer.