DHAKA: Germany has banned air cargo from Bangladesh following the lead of Australia and the United Kingdom.

Back in March, the United Kingdom slapped a ban on air cargo from Bangladesh citing security reasons. What followed was typical reaction, i.e. 900 million taka (US$11.47 million) worth of security equipment and a series of steps that would beef up security and training of personnel to international standards.

This is June and Germany has just announced the imposition of a ban on direct cargo flights from Bangladesh to any airport in Germany citing the same security reasons as the UK. According to the notice published by the German authorities the ban has come into effect “because of information provided by our law enforcement authority and intelligence services” that state that cargo flying out of Bangladesh poses a security threat.

This is hardly good news for us. It sends a very wrong signal to other countries in the European Union and will undoubtedly add unnecessary costs to exporting sectors of the economy which must now reroute their cargo through other airports before reaching Germany. Lufthansa is probably the only carrier that has direct flights to Germany from Bangladesh and now with re-screening of all air cargo at a third country will significantly cut down on lead times for exporters and add costs, which in all probability would have to be borne by exporters themselves. A very sticky situation for local industry and for which they are not responsible.

Germany represents the second largest ready-made garments (RMG) destination in the common market for Bangladesh (approximately US$4.75 billion). Hence a ban, as it happened with the UK ban means re-routing air cargo through Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and Thailand.

That policymakers have not taken heed to the successive bans starting from Australia, the UK and now Germany shows serious apathy to safeguarding our number one export product, garments.

Although international studies and market research continue to portray Bangladesh as one of the top 20 fastest growing trade lanes, all that is now under threat. Going by data of four years up to 2014, we can see that retail and fashion will be the main affected areas because trade with Germany is 95 per cent RMG-related.

According to Seabury group’s cargo and global trade database information, fashion-related air shipments from Bangladesh forecasted for 2016 is 13,204,767 kilograms. And forecasts for 2017 —2019 are 13,942,420 kgs; 14,646,801 kgs and 15,318,989 kgs respectively. Obviously the values of these air cargo shipments run into billions of dollars. Needless to say, we can expect a lot of commotion coming out of the various RMG bodies (both knit and woven) over this latest situation with the ban.

The German civil authority has communicated with the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh that all cargoes originating from Bangladesh are considered “high risk” and hence third country screening is now mandatory. Are our authorities now going to state that this ban is “unexpected” as it had termed the UK ban three months ago “unexpected”?

Unfortunately, this time round, there really is no excuse and the claim that had been made after the UK ban that we had nearly met all criteria for meeting security measures now falls flat with the German ban. We have to ask ourselves then precisely what was the point of hiring a British security company (at considerable expense to the national exchequer) to oversee the security of the airport in Dhaka?

And whatever happened to all that equipment bought or being bought and the retraining of security personnel on the ground? Are we then to assume that we have been twiddling our thumbs all this time and had hoped that the window dressing done in the name of security measures would not be noticed by foreign countries? All in all, a very dismal performance by us and we are going to pay the price for it.

The price of course will be more than cents-and-dollars; we pay a price in terms of credibility. Repeated bans by different countries, especially by major export destinations like Germany, is going to create scepticism to other countries in EU which have already been hit by terrorist attacks. While we may take our security lightly, countries in the EU certainly do not. As we had highlighted earlier, putting in effect a security regime is more than about procuring equipment. It requires adopting a different mindset to treat security as an integral part of doing business when running an airport that meets strict international guidelines. We unfortunately, have not been up to the mark in that game. Perhaps, the latest ban will serve as a wake-up call.

The Daily Star / Bangladesh

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2016