AMIDST the mounting environmental threats the decision to go for compulsory jute packaging even after four years of forming the law seems realistic. Once paramount, the golden fiber is now not in a position to compete with the plastic fiber. Failure of the successive governments to address the environmental threat and incurring loss in the last two decades has made its future more challenging. A national English daily reported that the Department of Jute started a drive to compel the millers and traders to use the environment-friendly jute sacks to pack rice for marketing domestically.
The government’s move comes after the Supreme Court of Bangladesh upheld a government decision that asked rice millers and traders to use jute sacks compulsorily from January to pack the staple rice. The Appellate Division reversed the order after the High Court Division last month stayed the effectiveness of the said government notification following a writ petition by some rice millers. The government issued the notification on September last year, asking all rice millers and traders to clear their stock of plastic bags by December 31 last year. However, private sector businesses remain non-compliant, citing reasons such as higher costs of jute sacks compared to poly-propylene or plastic bags and problems in branding.
The compulsory use of jute sacks is a question of survival for jute growers and a much needed sustenance for our jute industry. The jute industry, which involves about 40 lakh farmers and 15,00,000 workers, has been suffering from an acute downturn in exports earnings owing to the Middle East crisis and a slump in demand from Africa, Thailand and India. Exports receipts fell 20 percent year-on-year to $824 million in fiscal 2013-14, according to data from the Export Promotion Bureau. The free-fall continued into the new fiscal year, with export earnings dropping 24 percent year-on-year to $61 million in the opening month of fiscal 2014-15.
Industry operators said three-fourths of the domestically-produced jute is exported in raw or processed forms in the absence of domestic demand. This figure does not include the huge quantity of jute smuggled to India. The government in 2010 passed a law that made the packaging of certain percentage of food items and fertilisers mandatory in a bid to cushion the sector against the vagaries of global demand and cut use of the environmentally harmful polypropylene bags.
The public and private jute mills can produce more than 100 crore pieces of jute sacks a year, but at present they are making only 40-50 crore pieces of sacks a year, according to an estimate of the Bangladesh Jute Mills Association. The compulsory use of jute for packaging food grains will create an additional demand for 50 crore pieces of jute sacks a year. At present, the government agencies such as the Directorate General of Food, the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation and the Bangladesh Sugar and Food Industries Corporation use jute sacks for packaging.
The government initiative seems to be realistic and result oriented. However, to bring back the golden past of this much-prized natural fabric, there seems no alternative but to revive the industrial base of the country, particularly the units engaged in jute-goods manufacturing, so that they can compete internationally and thus not simply rely on domestic demand.
