Flood, Rundown Roads: Supply chain affected

Floods and rundown roads have become a major concern for businesses, as these are affecting supply chains and increasing both transportation costs and time, say industry players.

Disruption in supply can reduce profits of businesses and lead them to pass the additional costs on to consumers to avoid losses.

Kamruzzaman Kamal, director (marketing) of Pran-RFL Group, said supply network was affected badly during the initial days of recent flood.

Water logging and poor condition of roads hampered marketing in rural areas, he mentioned.

“The good sign is that the floodwater is receding fast… the situation is improving now...,” Kamal added.

Recurrent floods this year have damaged 568 kilometres of road fully and another 8,357 km partly in 32 northern and central districts. Besides, 457 bridges and culverts have been damaged.

Onrush of water washed away 108 km of embankments fully and damaged another 606 km, according to the Daily Disaster Situation Report released by the relief and disaster management ministry on August 27.

Md Khairul Islam, senior manager (logistics) of Transcom Electronics Ltd, said distribution of electronics items such as refrigerator and television was affected due to flood-induced damages to roads.

They cannot supply products timely in many places because of battered roads.

Citing an example, he said that a few months back, it took a covered van eight to nine hours to reach Dinajpur town from the capital. But now it takes almost double the time because of bad condition of the road, he said.

The cost of carrying goods by a covered van on the route went up by 50 percent to Tk 30,000 from Tk 20,000.

“We have been paying this additional cost of transportation for the last 15-20 days,” Khairul told The Daily Star early this week.

Not only big companies, wholesalers and retailers of perishable items are also suffering.

Mohammad Afsar Uddin, a potato wholesaler at Karwan Bazar market, said supply of vegetable declined up to 30 percent due to floods in the country's northern parts.

Besides, vegetables rot and their quality falls if there is long delay in transporting those to the capital.  “Ultimately, it's the consumers who pay for the loss,” he said.

Rustom Ali Khan, general secretary of Bangladesh Truck and Covered Van Owners Association, said the overall condition of highways deteriorated in recent days due to heavy rainfall and floods.

Overloading of trucks damages the roads further, said Rustom. “We have asked all truckers not to overload those. But some of them still do it to earn extra.”

As per the rules, a truck should not weigh more than 20 tonnes including its freight, he said.

Khondaker Golam Moazzem, research director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue, said, “Supply from urban to rural areas gets affected because of damages to transport infrastructure by floods.”

He further said farmers' income is reduced because of problems in transportation of their produce to urban areas. As a result of reduced supply, prices of farm produce go up and hurt consumers.

The economist stressed the need for building a multimodal transport system to keep supply chain of commodities intact and make it cost-effective.

“Supply chains suffer, both during normal time and during calamities, for too much dependence on roads,” he said.

Road-based trade network is not sustainable, he pointed out.

According to a Planning Commission report on Sustainable Transportation and Infrastructure, roads carry 80 percent of the total freight traffic and more than 88 percent of the passenger traffic in the country. Waterways and railways carry the rest of the freight and passenger traffic.

In neighbouring India, roads carry 60 percent of freight traffic and 80 percent of passenger traffic, while the figures are only 13.5 percent and 49.1 percent in China.