Tourism stats, salinity in the Mekong, bird flu, bus rapid transit and a great data tool for COVID-19

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My mind is occupied with COVID-19 and the stock market right now (I thought there would be a bigger bounce in Vietnam today - the US markets ended up almost 5% higher). But there are other things going on in the world besides the delay of my early retirement (or any retirement):

Source: HCMC Department of Tourism via Vietnamplus

Source: HCMC Department of Tourism via Vietnamplus

Tourism stats out: The year wasn’t starting that bad! In January, HCMC hosted 833,000 tourists, up 6% from January 2019. But February, the fall off was really drastic: -52%. Still the city was able to make VND21tr, $915m in tourism revenue in the first two months. That isn’t that bad, although March is going to be extremely bad.

What can we read from this? First, it really seems like the long term trends are in Vietnam’s favor. We will have to see what happens with tourism because of COVID-19, but right now, I think we could see a return to growth pretty quickly, once the panic recedes.

Second, I feel that Vietnam is getting a lot of credit for its ability to fight the spread of the virus. Or at least it was until the resurgence over the weekend. I still think that halo should help it attract tourists, but also investments, going forward.

Rising salinity in the Mekong delta: I have written about environmental issues around the Mekong a few times (here and scroll down to Feb. 20). I see this story as a small part of the bigger environmental story of the Mekong. It is simple: hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, depend on the Mekong either directly or indirectly. The reason that Vietnam is the third largest exporter of rice in the world is because of the Mekong.

But the problem is that, like we saw in 2016, rising salinity is threatening agricultural land and drinking water. In total 33,000 hectares of rice fields and 70,000 households have been affected so far.

The government estimates that 362,000 hectares of rice fields and 136,000 fruit trees in the Mekong Delta will be affected by drought and salinity this year. The net result is that more than 120,000 families will experience water shortages.

The impact on Vietnamese people’s lives will be vast, but it could also impact the rest of the world, since the country is the third largest exporter of rice by value. In 2018, it made up almost 9% of total world rice exports, so any hiccup could result in higher rice prices globally. As I wrote last Wednesday, rice exports were a glimmer of hope among mixed agriculture export news. This may be difficult if the drought is as bad as government expects.

Five provinces have already declared a state of emergency. The government needs to come up with a plan on how to counteract this.

More bird flu: From the coravirus to bird flu, Vietnam can’t get a break.

More than 137,000 poultry across 13 provinces and cities of Vietnam have been culled so far this year in an attempt to prevent bird flu outbreaks, the country's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said on Friday

This seems to be worse than last year. According to this story, the government had killed only 23,000 as of July last year. So this year’s figures are not good. But the impact is fairly limited to the bird owners. It doesn’t look like anyone has caught bird flu in Vietnam since 2014, and even from 2004-2014, when it was endemic, only 127 people were infected, although 64 of these died.

Also, swine flu isn’t over either, with almost 20,000 culled so far this year.

Bus rapid transit: Two years ago I went to Colombia, which has a great bus rapid transit system. What that means is dedicated lanes for buses that can travel express all over the city without getting stuck in traffic. It is much faster than riding in a car (at least at rush hour), and it is a lot less expensive for cities than building metros or trams.

HCMC is now building a bus rapid transit system using electric buses, which would be extremely environmentally friendly. It wouldn’t be cheap at $137m. But put that in context: authorities approved a budget of $1.87bn for metro line 1. Just 17 train cars cost $370m. So this is a bargain!

Ultimately, the city needs to come up to a solution to its traffic problems. It can’t be Grab and Go-Jek, although I love ride hailing personally. Ultimately, it needs to include public transit, and a part of that needs to be buses.

Finally, if you want a good overview of COVID-19 cases, here is a great interactive database from Johns Hopkins University.