Last fiscal year, about 26 percent of Bangladesh's imports worth $52.19 billion came from China, according to the central bank's country and commodity wise import data. A year earlier, the share of imports from China was 23.8 percent.


But now, because of the coronavirus pandemic that has left large swathes of China's factories as desolate as a ghost town, Bangladesh's manufacturers, especially those of the export-oriented garment sectors, are left playing a nervous waiting game: will normal service resume anytime soon?

"Nobody is saying that there will be no deliveries, but nobody is saying when they will be either," said MA Jabbar, managing director of DBL Group, a major garment exporter.

Given the tight deadlines that garment exporters work with, Jabbar's firm went on a mad dash to manage sourcing alternatives as news emerged towards the end of last month of the lethal, pneumonialike virus spreading like wildfire across China, the world's most populous nation, and at least two dozen other countries.

So uncontrollable the novel virus has become that Xi Jinping's government extended the bank holidays for Lunar New Year, the most important festival of the year in China, by nine days to February 9 in a bid to keep people home and halt its spread.

The fear of the virus, which has already claimed more lives than the lethal Sars epidemic that tore through more than two dozen countries including China between November 2002 and April 2003, is so widespread and intense that many workers are likely to remain away from factory towns for weeks.