The global recession is bringing Bangladesh such problems as dwindling exports and foreign remittances, but Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government should weather the storm, analysts and experts say. They base their hopes largely on agriculture, the biggest employer in this disaster-prone South Asian country of more than 140 million people. Declining food and oil prices globally, along with a bumper rice harvest, have pushed prices in domestic markets down substantially, and helped shield the country from economy-linked social unrest and protests. Though around 40 percent of Bangladeshis live on less than $1 a day, good crops over the years have generally ensured at least subsistence. There have been virtually no instances in Bangladesh of spontaneous violent protests purely driven by hunger, a senior government official told Reuters, asking not to be identified. “Bangladeshi people generally dislike violence but are often pulled into it by the over-zealous and vengeful politicians,” he said. Bangladesh was lucky to have its food basket nearly full following a bumper rice harvest last September and hopes for another bumper yield from the crop due in the next few weeks, although the country is prone to natural disasters like flooding and cyclones that can quickly knock such forecasts awry. But if all goes well, agriculture officials say, the country will have produced around 30 million tons of rice, the country's main staple, in the current fiscal year to June. “We only pray for nature to bless us,” said Abdul Mannaf, a farmer in the rice-growing northeastern district of Sylhet. The global financial crisis has started hitting two other main strands of the Bangladesh economy as earnings from textiles, the leading export, as well as remittances from overseas workers drop. “But these have not been too much a worry yet,” Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith recently told reporters, adding the government is working to face the problems. The authorities have ignored demands by exporters to devalue the Bangladesh taka against the dollar, which has encouraged 5.6 million expatriates to keep sending remittances regularly, one central bank official said. Bangladesh hoped for a stable democracy when Hasina took office in January after a landslide election win.
