Bangladesh News

The Ministry of Jute and Textiles has sought Tk 600 crore in the next three fiscal years to turn the ailing state-owned jute mills into profitable units in the fourth year, said high officials.
Endorsing the demand for money which will be used for buying raw jute and paying the overdue salaries of workers, an inter-ministry meeting at the jute and textiles ministry on Tuesday expressed concern over the wholesale neglect of the jute industry.
‘We are in touch with the Ministry of Finance to persuade it to make budgetary allocations or arrange funds through the banks at lower interest rates. Should we not save this labour-intensive industry and support jute growers across the country?’ a high official of the ministry told New Age.
The official regretted that the reasons, other than corruption and mismanagement, for making the jute mills sick have never been highlighted. Such reasons, as identified by the jute ministry, include politicisation of the workforce, lack of funding in due time, power outages that have adversely affected production and the wrong policies of the banks and the government, said ministry sources.
The government has not made any allocation in the proposed budget for the next fiscal year for the enterprises under the Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation although the longstanding dues of the mill workers amount to Tk 65 crore.
The authorities of 22 jute mills under the corporation owe the workers another staggering sum of Tk 113 crore in benefits that they are entitled to under the recent wage structure.
‘We have not been able to start disbursement of even a portion of this amount,’ added the official.
Tuesday’s meeting underlined the need for paying the salaries of the workers from the government’s budgetary money since the issue involved not only humanitarian considerations but also the state’s responsibility to support the workforce, a meeting source observed.
The adviser to the ministries of industries, textiles and jute and children and women affairs, Geetiara Shafia Chowdhury, was present at the meeting but she was not available for comments on the latest state of the jute sector.
Her colleague in the council of advisers, finance adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam, has already expressed his conviction that the jute industry under the management of the public sector was unlikely to be viable. He also criticised those who were speaking in favour of revival of the jute sector.
The government does not consider the jute sector an agro-based industry which draws special policy attention and incentives although jute is an agricultural product and four crore people are directly and indirectly involved with the jute sector. Moreover, Bangladesh grows the highest-quality jute in the world due to the quality of its soil.
When he was asked how the ailing jute mills could be rejuvenated, a meeting source
argued that if the required money had been given at the beginning of the jute
harvesting season in July, it could have helped the mill authorities to purchase raw jute at competitive prices. ‘We need relief from past burdens and want to start afresh to give the mills a new lease of life,’ the source added.
According to the corporation, the government has always been allocating inadequate amounts of money to the jute sector, and the funds were not disbursed before November when jute harvesting had already been completed three or four months back.
‘Such a policy only served the interest of farias (traders) and burdened the mills with additional costs,’ said the source. However, these traders, too, had an accumulated amount of Tk 130 crore for supplying jute to the state-run mills.
The number of jute mills under the corporation has been reduced to 22 from 82 during the post-independence period. Currently only 5-6 jute mills under private ownership are being run out of the 38 units that have a nominal existence, according to the ministry’s assessment.
The corporation’s mills’ accumulated loans and interest to the banks amount to some Tk 2,000 crore at present.
When he was asked if privatisation of the ailing jute units would improve their productivity, an official of the ministry pointed out that some people were ready to buy the industrial units at ‘nominal prices’ mainly to capture the large areas of land attached to the mills, so their management would not improve the performance of those mills.