Jute as the Fibre of the Future: Challenges and Potentials

Md. Shahriar Alam, State Minister for Foreign Affairs, delivered his speech on Jute as the Fibre of the Future.

"On the eve of our 52nd Victory Day, I extend my profound respect and homage to our visionary leader, Father of our Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, whose lifelong struggle paved the way for our freedom. I also pay deep tribute to our valiant freedom fighters whose courage and sacrifices helped liberate our motherland. I cannot help but recall that this premise where we have gathered today played a critical role during our pre- and post-independence days," he said today (Dec 15).

The State Minister for Foreign Affairs says, Jute has been very much part of our independence struggle. The foreign currency earned from jute produced here was disproportionately used between the two parts of the erstwhile Pakistan. The evident discriminatory treatment further fuelled the Bengali nation’s aspiration for self-determination. In the independent Bangladesh, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib’s government had to take the decision to nationalize the jute factories abandoned by their Pakistan-origin owners.

Jute continued to remain the lead export item, providing a much-needed lifeline to international trade for the new-born nation.
Regrettably, with the worldwide spread of synthetic products like plastic, jute started losing its prominence in the global packaging and carpet industries. Successive administrations here in Bangladesh also presided over the gradual decline and closure of many state-owned jute factories, with hardly any efforts made at diversifying jute-based products.

It was Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government that began working on its commitment to help revive the jute industry through a series of policy and fiscal interventions. The long-accumulated legacy of inefficiency and losses made the task difficult, but it appears that the jute sector is again poised for a qualitative shift in an increasingly favourable global and local environment.

As you have heard, in the last fifteen years, our government has supported the work on decoding the genome sequence of jute as well as a fungus that affects jute production. Jute is recognised as an agricultural product in order for it to benefit from the support provided to other such commodities. Following several attempts at reopening the ailing jute mills, the government has finally decided to lease out a number of jute factories to private operators, with partial success so far. It is critical that the private managements that have taken over the jute mills do operate them as per the stipulated terms and conditions.

The government made it convenient for them by offering a substantive severance package to the previous batch of workers along with arrangements for sustainable savings.

In parallel, efforts are being made to encourage diversification of jute products with a view to catering to the evolving needs in the international market. We see a nation-wide growth of cottage, small and medium industries working on jute design and products, with an overwhelmingly large presence of women.

It is also encouraging to see some big names in the country’s industrial sector expanding their investment portfolio in jute. We would urge those interested in the jute sector to consider investing in backward linkage by taking over some of the existing state-owned jute mills still lying inoperative. It is an express intention of the government to move away from jute business and act more in a supportive and enabling role across the jute value chain.

To this effect, our agricultural scientists are working on developing further jute varieties towards enhancing the volume, strength and quality of the fabric. We need to find pragmatic solutions to some of the persistent challenges like procuring and supplying jute seeds in a timely and cost-effective manner. Our jute research community has developed a number of innovative and potential applications of jute, including plastic-substitute packaging materials.

It remains crucial to foster meaningful academia-industry linkage in order to allow such innovations to be scaled up commercially. I feel certain that the growing demand for jute in the international market would drive suitable adjustments to our trade and revenue policies in order to help boost innovations and exports. As in some other thrust sectors, we must move in a planned manner involving all concerned stakeholders to reach some time-bound targets for the overall development of the jute sector.

It is time for us to capitalize on the aggressive push for sustainability and circularity in the global supply chain to enable jute to find its rightful name recognition and place. It is alarming that millions of tons of non-degradable materials are entering our soil and water, severely affecting our planetary health and eco-system. In contrast, jute and other natural fibres can hold solutions to some such effects provided we could mobilize sufficient resources and expertise to develop and promote innovative solutions around them.

In case of jute, it is important to highlight its adaptability and versatility beyond its traditional image of a coarse packaging material. We now know that diverse solutions like high-value activated charcoal to high-tech applications like geo-textiles can be derived from jute, and it falls on us to further disseminate this information. We must seize the opportunity to project jute as the ‘fibre of the future’ as part of the green growth strategy our world is pursuing. To this end, Bangladesh has taken the initiative to get a Resolution on the use of jute and other natural fibres adopted by the UN General Assembly every two years.

From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we stand ready to work together with all concerned stakeholders to run a strategic campaign on jute in the spirit of the UNGA Resolution. We wish to see jute featured as a core element of ‘Branding Bangladesh’ in the broader context of sustainable development, fair trade, and climate action.

We would like to invite our friends and partners from around the world to join us in this initiative; and, from my side, I offer five specific suggestions where we believe we could forge mutually beneficial partnerships:

First, promote jute as an eco-friendly alternative to non-degradable materials as part of our shared commitment to a nature-positive world;

Second, support free and fair trade in jute and jute products as a way to support jute cultivators and entrepreneurs – the real custodians of this unique natural resource;

Third, invest in research and innovation for stress-resistant jute varieties and high value-added jute products towards exploring jute’s optimum potentials;

Fourth, support efficient product design and development, including for extracting and processing raw jute, with a view to improving quality and preventing wastage or pollution; and,

Fifth, spread words about jute as a possible lifestyle choice for youth around the world in their search for sustainable textiles, packaging, furnishings or paper.

To conclude, I thank all our colleagues and partners from the government, private sector and diplomatic corps for their spontaneous support for this event. This is our modest effort to celebrate the ‘Product of the Year 2023’ and chart a way forward to harness the potentials of jute in the coming years. We hope to join hands with all willing partners to enhance jute’s market visibility, align it with global sustainability trends, and foster an inclusive, green growth for a climate-neutral future.