Boosting local yarn production can revitalise silk sector

BSS, Rajshahi
Boosting production of local yarn can help revitalizing the silk sector to regain its lost legacy, said the sericulture and silk related experts and professional.
They viewed that the local consumption could be met up through domestic outputs after the best uses of the existing natural resources and there is no doubt in this regard.
Talking to BSS here today Alhaz Sadar Ali, pioneer silk industry owner in Rajshahi, stated that the glorious sector has been facing an embarrassing position at present due to abnormal price hike of imported China silk yarn and abnormal declining of its local production.
He highlighted various aspects of the silk sector and its contribution to the national and local economy.
Importance should be given on how to boost up the grassroots yarn production through proper utilizing the existing natural and other infrastructural resources side by side with minimizing the existing obstacles.
Silk industrialist Liakat Ali said the price of China silk was Taka 2,250 per kilogram couple of years ago but the current price has gone up at least three to four times more at present and that is beyond capacity of many of the silk manufacturers.
Not only that, he apprehended that the price will go up further. By itself, China is manufacturing cloth through stopping silk yarn export, he added.
In this adverse situation, Liakat Ali revealed that there is no alternative to enhance local production to protect the dignified sector from degradation.
He recalled that the local production had been devastated after 1991 when the businessmen and non-businessmen had started importing silk taking advantages of the free market policy.
In this regard, he mentioned that over 1,200 tonnes of silk yarns were imported while the local demand was hardly 350 tonnes per year at that time the professional cocoon farmers are being forced to leave their ancestral profession being deprived of getting price of their produced yarn.
Liakat Ali opined that the sector needs an urgent initiative to retain the skilled labourers especially realers, weavers and printers in the profession to protect the sector as a whole.