News and Alerts.

Indian Government agencies have begun to discourage legal import of betel nut (also called areca nut, pinang or supari) by unnecessarily harassing genuine importers. As a refult betelnuts now would be smuggled into india as before. This would encourage the mafia to become more active with the help of their so called importers at Nepal

The Berlin-based anti-corruption watchdog said Bangladesh shares the top spot with the central African country of Chad. The government has not yet commented on the latest corruption list. This is the fifth year in a row that Bangladesh has topped the corruption perception index. Last year, the Caribbean country, Haiti, ranked top with Bangladesh. The survey relates to perceptions of the degree of corruption in different countries, as seen by business people, academics and risk analysts.

'No real effort'

Corruption is widespread in Bangladesh and is a hot political and controversial issue and feuding political parties often charge each other with being corrupt.

• Bangladesh
• Chad
• Turkmenistan
• Burma
• Haiti

• Iceland
• Finland
• New Zealand
• Denmark
• Singapore

Emergency imposed in Nepal. Prime minister is dismissed. The King has assumed all power to himself for the next 3 years. Betel nut import to nepal will be affected by this as the smugling of betel nut to india will be reduced. Currently Nepal Imports about 20,000 MT per year and in the coming years it will be greatly reduced.

On 26th December the world has been hit with a natural calamity of the tsunami waves. The waves hit parts of western indonesia and Some thai costal areas. There are some rumours that the entire crop of betel nuts have been spoilt, this statement is NOT TRUE. the Tsunamis waves have destroyed much of the costal area, but the nature of the betel nut trees is such that it doesnt grow on the beach areas. in other words, no tree/stock of betel nuts have been destroyed, this is only the roumours spread by some speculators to inflate the price of betelnuts by trigering a panic buying. As a result, now the buyers have started to realise that the panic were based on rumours so they have cancelled the deals based on the panic.

As far as Thailand is concerned, only the beach front tourist places were hit by the sunami, we would like to assure you that no betel nut wendor/farmer collects/grows betel nuts in those areas.

At Indonesia only the Aceh province was hit. The province accounts for a very tiny percentage of the production of comodities like Gambier and Betel nuts. Rebuilding process is on and we are sure that regular production can start within a fer days time.

• Indonesia - 97,636 dead, 132,197 missing *
• Sri Lanka - 29,854 dead, 6,007 missing *
• India - 10,749 dead, 5,640 *
• Thailand - 5,313 dead 3,396 missing *
• Somalia - 150 dead *
• Maldives - 82 dead 26 missing *
• Malaysia - 68 dead 6 missing *
• Mayanmar - 59 dead *
• Tanzania - 10 dead *
• Scychelles - 3 dead *
• Bangladesh - 2 dead *
• Kenya - 1 dead *

Ajitabh Werma had been afilated with our organisation since september 2004. During december we sacked Ajitabh Werma when we were made aware of his unethical practices.