The New Nation - Internet Edition

BSS, Rajshahi

The traditional silk industry has been facing an awkward position at present due to abnormal price hike of imported silk yarn.

According to sources concerned, the running industries are incurring loss of around Taka 4,000 to 5,000 everyday while the small ones are on the dying condition.

Akter Hossain of Tanzila Silk told BSS that the price of China silk was Taka 2,250 per kilogram during last Eid-ul-Fitr. But the current price has stood at Taka 3350.

He said the local production has been reduced to zero level and the price of imported yarn is the sky-high. Not only that, he apprehended that the price will go up further.

"We have no alternative to shut down the industries at this adverse situation," Akter Hossain lamented.

He recalled that the price of locally produced yarn was Taka 1,300 per kilogram while the China-yarn was Taka 2,500 in 1988. After 1991, the market was opened and taking this advantage the businessmen and non-businessmen had started importing silk in the name of quality yarn indiscriminately.

In this regard, he mentioned that at least 1,200 tonnes of silk yarns were imported while the local demand was hardly 350 tonnes per year at that time.

He alleged that huge imported silk yarns were smuggled out to the neighbouring country. Unfortunately, many of the professional cocoon farmers started leaving their ancestral profession being deprived of getting fair price of their produced yarn.

Owner of Adhunik Silk and Central Vice-president of National Association of Small Industries in Bangladesh (NASIB) Liakat ali told BSS that there is no alternative to enhance local production to protect the sector from degradation.

He said many factories, who are involved only in producing cloth, have been forced to close their looms and he himself shut down his partial production. Besides, he apprehended that many more factories would become non-functional on finishing their yarn stock.

Another factory owner Golam Ambiya reported that his 35 staff and labourers would become unemployed if his factory is shut down.

"I am passing my days with deep anxiety over running my six looms in future," another silk industry owner Abdul Quddus said adding that the silk price of Taka 2,000 to Taka 2,200 is affordable to keep the factories operational.

He sought government intervention in this regard. Recently, he said an entrepreneur imported silk clothes due to the yarn price hike, which he terms as suicidal for the silk industry sector.

Liakat Ali opined that the sector needs an urgent initiative to retain the skilled labourers including the realer and weavers in the profession to protect the sector as a whole.