Business News

19 sericulture villages
to be set up
Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha . Rajshahi

The Bangladesh Sericulture Board has undertaken a project to promote and extend sericulture and its industry through entrepreneurship development at different levels of production.
According to the officials concerned, the proposed five-year project titled ‘Extension and Development of Sericulture in Public and Private sector in Bangladesh’ will be implemented throughout the country with Tk 30 crore.
The Bangladesh Sericulture Research and Training Institute and the Bangladesh Silk Foundation will also work as other implementing agencies.
The sources said the project would establish 19 sericulture villages at the potential areas as a model to improve capacity of small and marginal farmers to establish high yielding mulberry garden and produce superior quality of silk cocoon.
The villages will function as a centre for economic activity and people of the adjacent areas will gradually be inspired and involved in income generation process.
Sunil Chandra Pal, chairman of BSB, told the news agency that sericulture and silk industry was a family-based labour-intensive economic activity that provided employment for the rural people.
About six lakh people are involved in this industry of which one lakh are cocoon growers and the rest are engaged in silk reeling, spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing, finishing and trading activities.
The multidisciplinary activities provide unique job opportunity to the marginal farmers, landless poor, rural artisans and also the urban silk fabric manufacturing industries and can contribute a lot to poverty reduction, he added.
In the country, he said, there were around 80 small and medium silk factories in private sector with capacity of manufacturing 2.55 crore metres fabrics annually. Apart from this, there are about 10,000 private handlooms with capacity of producing 3 crore metres silk fabric.
Sunil Pal said the programme would develop suitable mulberry and silkworm varieties and produce and supply superior quality mulberry saplings and cuttings and silkworm eggs according to the demands of the farmers.
Some six lakh mulberry saplings would be raised and 3,000 people would be engaged for the purposes of plantation and nursing of the trees
within the project period,
under which, 24,000 kilograms of seed cocoons will also be produced.
Importance would be given on dissemination of technology, supply of inputs and supports of marketing of the finished goods. Necessary supports for infrastructure development, machinery procurement, raw materials and human resource development would be provided from the project.
In addition to arrangement training for 2,130 farmers, 330 persons will be provided improved training on reeling, weaving and dyeing and printing.
He said another 700 farmers, 200 reelers/spinners and 200 silk weavers would be given need-based training to improve their working efficiency in the field for improvement of rearing of mulberry trees and silkworm and reeling and weaving productivity.
Apart from this, technical support would be provided and training of more than 4,000
persons to be arranged to develop design and quality of silk products that will expand it market potential at home and abroad.
On completion by 2013, the project will help alleviating poverty of some 50,000 people by directly supporting them through employment generation side by side with developing 4,200 new cocoon producers who will produce at least 650 metric tonnes of healthy cocoons along with increasing overall silk production in the country.