Ministers, high government officials, leading chamber and association leaders and top exporters will sit together at a meeting today ((Wednesday) to discuss possible strategies for facing the negative impact of last year's prolonged flood on various export sectors of the country.

According to sources, the government-formed task force meeting will discuss the declining trend in ten major export sectors and possible steps for overcoming the situation.

The meeting will be held at the Commerce Ministry's conference room in the morning.

Headed by Commerce and Industries Minister Tofail Ahmed, the task force includes State Minister for Foreign Af-

fairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury, secretaries of the Ministry of Finance. Foreign Affairs. Commerce. Home Affairs. Governor Of Bangladesh Bank, chairman of the National Board of Revenue (NBR). Vice-chairman of the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB). FBCCI President and heads of all export-related trade associations as its members.

The members of the task force sit together whenever some emergency needs arise regarding export-related issues though the committee is supposed to hold a meeting every month, said sources.

This will be the 25th meeting of the body. The last meeting was held in November. 1998.

Export earnings from ten

major sectors declined during the first half of the current fiscal compared to the corresponding period-of the previous year due mainly to two-month bashing of the devastating flood.

According to statistics, export earnings from frozen food declined by 15.59 per cent, agricultural products by 40.19 per cent, raw jute 52 per cent, petroleum by -products 58.61 per cent, leather 15 per cent, engineering products 26.27 per cent, electronic goods 8.86 per cent, jute goods 4.14 per cent and handicraft sector by 2.12 per cent.

Earnings from only five sectors increased during the period. These are knitwear by 9.17 per cent, woven garments by 1.8 per cent, primary products by

16.19 per cent arid manufacturing goods by 6.10 per cent.

Total export earnings, however. declined by 1.85 per cent during July-December '98 over the same period of the previous

The meeting will also review a number of FBCCI recommendations for adopting long and short-term strategies to face the crushing impact of the flood.

The previous meeting assigned the FBCCI and EPB to survey and make recommendations' on the flood-related losses faced by various export sectors.

The task force will also review the progress on various decisions taken in previous meetings.