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Jute can foster green growth: analysts

Star Business Report
Jute pulp has the potential to be a growth driver for the economy and can enable Bangladesh to make strides towards becoming a green economy, said analysts yesterday.
"Jute pulp is a potential game-changing growth agenda. Jute offers the potential to be an environmentally sound, rapidly scalable, and poverty reducing new growth driver," said Hossain Zillur Rahman, executive chairman of the Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC).
The optimism was shared at a session on jute organised by the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre marking its 60th anniversary.
"Because of climate change-induced environmental concerns, jute has become an attractive business proposition," said Rahman, adding that a lot of people are involved in the sector, which offers the opportunity of 100 percent value addition.
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"It supports green economy," said the economist.
Rahman, also a former adviser to the last caretaker government, said jute pulp and pulp factories were rapidly scalable. He said products that were rapidly scalable have significant backward and forward linkages.
The production of jute pulp is potentially a low threshold technology that can enable setting up of small factories in rural areas, he said, adding that stakeholders, including jute traders, large farmers and local entrepreneurs, would respond if appropriate policies were framed.
Jute pulp is also an environmentally sound product, he added.
The views come at a time when jute production is rising. Exports are also growing, with raw jute and jute
yarn constituting 79 percent of the total exports value of $1 billion fetched by the sector in the fiscal year of 2017-18.
However, non-traditional items account for only 9 percent of the total export earnings.
Rahman said the focus has to be on items that were rapidly scalable while have multiple backward and forward linkages.
“This is where the strategic nature of jute pulp comes into play. Jute has a massive domestic market. If we need another war against polythene, jute paper bag can be the one," he said.
However, he said, the new potential of jute appears to remain hostage to legacy burden, namely the unsustainable fiscal burden of loss making public sector jute mills.
"Why should we be funneling money into the loss-making public
mills? This has to be addressed," said Rahman, suggesting policy dialogues between the finance and jute ministries to tap the potential of jute and the issue of fiscal burden for loss-making public mills.
He recommended framing a jute paper law in line with the mandatory jute packaging law and devising a policy package.
Showing a biodegradable "Sonali" polybag made of jute polymer, Mubarak Ahmad Khan, scientific adviser of Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation, said it was now being produced under a prepilotingscheme at a state mill.
The government has taken an initiative to commercialise the bag, he said.
Shaila Khan, assistant country director and adviser of Business Development and Partnerships of the United Nations Development
Programme, Bangladesh, said adequate investment had not been made to realise the potential of jute.
“We need to champion our own products," said Khan, adding that jute had the potential from the perspective of attaining Sustainable Development Goal-12.
"Jute can ensure green growth," she said.
Paul Bundick, chief of party, Agricultural Value Chains Project, USAID, suggested changing the business model of the mills. The mills can buy the whole crop and use the sticks to make activated charcoal, he said.
Nihad Kabir, president of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, chaired the event while Rina Parveen, additional secretary to the textiles and jute ministry, also spoke.