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Product innovation lost on lax govt marketing

Porimol Palma
A large number of jute products developed by local scientists have not made it to the market despite their huge commercial potential, mostly due to the laid-back government attitude towards promoting and marketing them.
Efforts to encourage more use of traditional jute products like sacks in packaging food grains, cement and fertiliser and increase the use of jute-based geotextile are also non-existent.
The sepia-toned picture is largely due to the fact that the
government does not have any research wing to analyse market data and create local and international markets, experts and officials said.
“Only a market research can give a clear picture of the local and global demand. A country can
make good policy decisions if it has strategic market information," Dewan Sayeedul Hassan, media and information officer at the International Jute Study Group (IJSG), said.
This has not been the case for the government when it comes to the jute industry, which provides huge employment and adds 100 percent value to its export items.
Bangladesh raked in $318.34 million and $165.06 million from jute-product and raw-jute exports in the past fiscal year. The figures could be much higher if the sector
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got proper attention.
Manufacturing jute paper and increasing the use of sacks could also cut the import of packaging materials and paper, said the experts.
"Most of the jute products the BJRI (Bangladesh Jute Research Institute) developed are not being commercially manufactured," said a BJRI scientist.
The institute has developed, among other things, blanket, good quality curtain cloth, wool and slab yarn from jute or sometimes blending acrylic and cotton in the process, he said.
, "State-owned. and ■ privatesector mills are not coming up to inass-produce these products," he said, adding that a few policy decisions on the part of the government would help reverse it.
Using biotechnology, the scientists developed hard paper from the jute plant. The technology uses 30 percent less energy compared to the ones used in traditional paper mills.
Writing paper can also be produced from jute fibre using the technology, IJSG Consultant (Operations) Siddiqur Rahman said, adding that both items have huge
demand in the local market.
Entrepreneurs, as usual, have not shown much interest in it.
Bangladesh Jute Mills Association (BJMA) Chairman Nazmul Huq blamed the BJRI for this, saying the jute research institute is reluctant to transfer technologies to private entrepreneurs. "There's a lot of bureaucratic snafu in there."
"One reason for the disinterest may be that entrepreneurs want supply of jute all through the year. The government may encourage the farmers to grow more jute," the IJSG's Siddiqur Rahman said.
He said geotextile holds out -gre arprom i s efm -th n t rySPh
army recently started using it. he said.
BJMA Chairman Nazmul Huq, also managing director of the Janata Jute Mills which now produces geotextile, said European countries are increasing the use of such biodegradable products.
The government has got to encourage the domestic use of these jute products, he said, adding that packaging food grains, cement and fertiliser with sacks should be made mandatory.
He pointed to India where such measures are already in place.