| Plight of the jute industry
Bangladesh last year exported 16 lakh bales of raw jute of which only India imported 10 lakh bales, but this year there is litle demand for raw jute though the local mills still have more than 16 lakh bales of jute in stock. If eight more mills are leased out, at least 45-50 lakh bales of raw jute will remain unsold, which will affect adversely the jute cultivators and others involved in the jute business. Besides, a large workforce will become jobless overnight with litle scope of being provided again anywhere in the already squeezed industrial sector.
The jute and textile mills at different places set up in the 1950s and 1960s are now being closed down as the state-owned jute and textile corporations have proved not competent to run those. Rather, all these top-heavy bodies with bureaucratic tangle suffer from an inertia that must be overcome first The jute mills corporation, on the other hand, hardly can bear any more loss being incurred since the mills were taken over in 1972.
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