World Bank: Power coverage Vietnam to manage quality of has reached 93% in Bangladesh coffee through new database
BANGLADESH has made significant progress in access to electricity as its electrification coverage reached 93 per cent, thanks to the stronger political commitment of the Awami League government.
The World Bank in its justpublished Energy Progress Report 2019 mentioned that among the countries with the largest population without access to electricity, Bangladesh, Kenya, Myanmar and Sudan have made the most progress.
It said global electrification rate reached 89 per cent; the number of people without electricity access dropped to around 840 million, compared to one billion in 2016 and 1.2 billion in 2010.
But the Awami League government, led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, achieved tremendous success in the power and energy sector because of its realistic roadmap with an aim to reach power to every household by 2021.
Talking to national news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said access to quality and reliable electricity is no more a dream as 93 per cent of people are now getting power, comapred to only 47 per cent before 2009.
According to power cell data, the power generation capacity of Bangladesh now stands at 21,419MW, with power connections increasing to 33.2 million, while the number of power plants reached 130.
Tracking SDG7
The Energy Progress Report 2019 showed that despite the progress, reaching the remaining unserved people, including those connected to frail and overburdened urban grids, as well as displaced people, and hard-to-reach locations, will be challenging. An estimated 650 million people will be left without electricity access in 2030.
The report tracks global, regional and country progress on the three targets of Sustainable Development Goal-7: access to energy and clean cooking, renewable energy and energy efficiency. It identifies priorities for action and best practices that have proven successful in helping policymakers and development partners understand what is needed to overcome challenges.
Among the least electrified countries, South Sudan, Guinea-Bissau and Central African Republic have been electrified at around three per cent each year since 2010. Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Nepal are currently among the fastest electrifying countries.
Maintaining and extending the pace of progress in all regions and sectors will require stronger political commitment, long-term energy planning, increased private financing and adequate policy and fiscal incentives to spur faster deployment of new technologies, the report underscores. A DATABASE of coffee areas will be used as a digital tool to assist partners in managing coffee plantations and quality in Vietnam, participants heard at a workshop held on Thursday by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Global Coffee Platform (GCP).
The database will assess how Vietnamese coffee farmers understand and adopt good practices for sustainable coffee production following a pilot programme held in Lam Dong province’s Di Linh district with the participation of more than 8,500 coffee households.
The database will monitor origins, seed use, status and management of land, water sources, irrigation systems and inter-cropping.
According to Le Van Duc, deputy director of the ministry’s Plant Cultivation Department, coffee needed origin certification for sustainable development towards improving quality, added value and food safety.
“It is very important to build a database with area codes to assess the origin of coffee products,” Duc said.
He said the database would be available to help farmers to manage production input, helping businesses trace origin and direct investment into production.
In order to expand this system, GCP representative in Vietnam Tran Quynh Chi said Lam Dong province would work with the ministry and GCP to build a roadmap to develop the database system to the whole province.
“For other provinces, the GCP is working on other projects in the coffee industry to support farmers and help these provinces apply the system,” Chi said.
“We need to apply this system on a large scale otherwise it would not be effective. We also need to apply it uniformly to an entire region, and then we will have an overview of the coffee industry,” she added.
According to Chi, the ministry had a number of programmes for sustainable coffee development, including the Vietnam-Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Project ( VnSAT). These programmes are helping the ministry to expand the database. On that basis, the ministry can develop guidelines for provinces to build their own budgets and collect data.
Last year, Vietnam had 680,000ha of coffee plantations with a yield of 2.5 tonnes per hectare. The country exported 1.8 million tonnes of coffee with a value of $3.5 billion the same year. VIET NAM NEWS/ASIA NEWS NETWORK