Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation is suffering shipment problems in exporting its goods that caused financial loss of Tk 140 crore due to ongoing countrywide blockade, BJMC officials said on Sunday. The foreign buyers of the BJMC products have started cancelling their orders due to shipment problems, and were shifting their orders to other countries, they said.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance started enforcement of blockades from November 26 to press home their demand for elections under a non-party caretaker government.
‘BJMC goods are shipped to different countries from two sea ports— Chittagong and Mongla. The shipment remains closed due to the blockade as trucks are not available to transport the goods from mills to the seaports,’ a top official of BJMC marketing department told New Age.
The shipment of 12,000 to 15,000 tonnes of jute goods worth about Tk 140 crore, produced by BJMC, got stuck in December, he said.
Another BJMC official said undelivered finished jute products which were kept in warehouses were vulnerable to fire.
According to statistics, BJMC is currently operating a total of 26 enterprises including jute mills and other factories with annual production (average) of 2.50 lakh tonnes of jute goods. Of them, BJMC is annually exporting jute goods of some 2.20 lakh tonnes with foreign earning of Tk 950 crore on an average.
The annual consumption of the raw jute for BJMC is estimated at 12 lakh bales, the data showed.
The jute products BJMC produces include hessian cloth, hessian bags, sacking bags, sacking cloths, carpet backing cloths, geo-jute/soil saver, yarn/twine, jute tape and canvas cloth.
Destination of the BJMC products are China, India, UAE, Syria and the United States as well as some European and African countries, officials said.
When asked, BJMC acting chairman and also director (production and Jute) Colonel (retd) K Lelin Kamal told New Age on Sunday that BJMC could not continue shipment due to ongoing blockade programmes, causing heavy loss in foreign currency from the sector.
Besides, he said the blockade was severely hampering the country’s jute millers to procure raw jute from local markets due to transport problems.
The obstruction to raw jute procurement would definitely delay the supply of bags and sacks for the state-owned corporations for packaging their products, a senior BJMC official said.
-With New Age input
