It is no secret that the government has to inject money every year to help the mills running. It has been given more than Tk 6,000 crore from 2009 for buying jute, paying dues and staff salaries. It raises question why the organization which is supposed to earn handsome profit every year is not only living on annual budgetary support but also having over Tk 12000 crore in bank loans up to December 2015.
It appears that vested interest quarters are causing the big setback turning it a loss making one while they are making huge fortune by controlling the marketing. They are preventing the organization to sell its products produced by mills and export abroad. It is being held hostage by politically linked business houses since 1991 leaving the marketing to agents who buy at low cost and sell and export at higher prices. BJMC officials in sensitive position are lending help to these quarters and benefitting themselves. Corruption and mismanagement at all levels are not only destroying the organization under political shelter, it is bringing setback to the entire industry.
This political quarter has stopped the privatization of the government owned mills and even taken back some in the government hands, which were earlier, privatized. Though such mills are suffering losses, they are allowing government funding of such mills and this is how patronizing trade union leaders and workers to achieve political ends. Everybody knows that business is run on the basis of profit and since jute mills earlier nationalized after independence were failing to run their business profitably, the privatization programme started. There was a long list of the jute mills that were yet to be sold out when the present government came to power, the wheel of privatization started to run back.
In our view the state can’t shoulder such losses every year and privatization of BJMC mills is the only way to make them profiteering. It is a strong proposition and we should say it must be reckoned with.
