The World Bank has offered Vietnam a $10-million loan to help its poultry industry recover from the devastating bird-flu crisis, bank officials said on Friday.
”We have discussed it internally and have mobilised resources to that amount, should the Vietnamese government accept it,” said Klaus Rohland, World Bank representative in Vietnam.
The bank offered its help ”to support the medium-term consequences of bird flu, for rebuilding the chicken industry in the country as well as a system to make sure, should it happen again, that it could have a better response”, Rohland added.
No agreement has yet been signed but bank officials have discussed it with the Ministry of Agriculture, he said, adding that payments could probably not start before May.
The disease, which has hit 10 Asian nations, has killed five people in Thailand and 14 in Vietnam.
The United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Friday the epidemic was still not under control despite a cull of more than 80-million poultry, and urged affected nations to remain vigilant.
”The spread of the avian influenza virus in several Asian countries is still not under control … Cambodia, China, Indonesia and Laos continue to report new outbreaks in poultry,” it said in a statement.
About 33-million fowl out of Vietnam’s total estimated poultry population of 250-million have died or been culled since late December in a bid to contain bird flu. — Sapa-AFP