Sumaiya Siddique, MBR Team

MBR: Bangladesh has witnessed the ups and downs of the jute industry. Would you please share with us the current scenario of the jute industry?
Shyam Sunder Agarwala: Recently, Bangladesh government has imposed a new act that requires people to use jute sacks mandatorily for carrying some products. For this reason, we can see the domestic demand for jute products has increased manifold. Previously, our source of revenue was exporting jute products. But, huge demand for jute products has been seen in the country now. We don’t need to rely only on export these days.
Sometimes, we face a tremendous load of order and we cannot make delivery on time. Especially, when the government started to procure food grains, the demand for jute sack has increased tremendously. In the last two years, we have produced around 12 mln jute sacks and delivered them to the government.

MBR: Jute products are environment-friendly and there are multiple products made of jute. What are the challenges businessmen face while commercializing them?
Shyam Sunder Agarwala: For Bangladesh, the neighboring country India is the biggest market for export. Recently, India introduced different incentives where different duty structures have been set for their millers. So, they are getting incentives whereas we are not getting any in our country. Hence, our products are more expensive than theirs. This inequality is creating a challenge for exporting jute products for us. Lack of incentives sometimes even makes it difficult for us to survive. If our government makes a uniform duty structure for us, we will able to do business in a profitable way. It will also help us expand our business in the future. Secondly, another significant barrier is the distribution problem. For example, only the selected jute millers should be distributing jute sacks to the government. But, there are some outsiders who distributed bags to the government which they are not supposed to do. Government should take the initiative to stop those outsiders. Otherwise, it will be very tough for us to survive.

MBR: We would like to hear from you about the current prospects of the jute industry in Bangladesh.
Shyam Sunder Agarwala: We can clearly foresee that plastic products will be banned worldwide soon. The world is moving towards advanced machineries. In contrast, our country uses old machineries to produce jute products. The Indian government provides 20% subsidy for installing new machineries. As cost of installing advanced machineries is very high, millers often feel discouraged to go for advanced machineries for this reason. If the government of Bangladesh starts to offer subsidies for replacing old machineries, millers will grab this opportunity to install modern machineries. As a result, efficiency will improve and mass people will get the chance to enjoy high-quality products at lower costs. When products quality increases, the export demand increases automatically. My suggestion is, if government solve this issue soon, the prospects of jute products will improve and it will be able to share a positive contribution to our economy.

MBR: Bangladesh is taking lots of initiative to ban plastic products. Do you still think Bangladesh people can afford jute products instead of plastic products for their daily use?
Shyam Sunder Agarwala: It is impossible to stop or ban plastic products entirely. It will take some time. We also do not have that much efficiency at present. The government takes initiatives to ban plastic products, we will start replacing plastic bags with jute bags. By replacing them with jute bags. However, this is not possible to make it happen over the night.. Currently, we are exporting raw jute to India. But, if we can ban plastic bags entirely, our domestic demand will increase. For this reason, new employment opportunities will be created, and we will no longer be depended. If the government genuinely wants to change the scenario, it is not tough to ban plastic products and replace them with jute products.