potato export fell by 33% in June 2013
Bangladesh: New potato processing plant gives hope for next year
Exporters said they are under a stagnant economic condition because of the transportation problem due to political instability in the current year, resulting in heavy losses and cancellation of orders.
Political programmes such as hartals (general strike), road blockades and transport strikes have put the potato exporters in severe delay in getting delivery of the item which caused them financial losses. "By the end of last February five truck-loads of potato from Sirajganj district could not be exported to our Malaysian buyer as the goods lost quality due to delay caused by road blockade for two days," said Sheikh M Daniel, an exporter of Mac brand potato.
"We have now initiated a processing plant line near Sitakunda area to save our export from disruption. With the state-of-the-art technology customised to our requirement, we can now pack and process the exportable potato to the tune of about 30 tonnes per hour," Daniel said. Installation of this processing plant, procured from Taiwan, is expected to be completed by next December, which will be the first of its kind in the country, he said. Currently, potato processing is done completely in the manual system.
"We are happy to announce that this processing line has helped us secure the advance booking of export orders for approximately 600 tonnes from Malaysia for the next year. This gives us hope to try to break through the 1,000 tonnes export mark next year," he said. There are new emerging potato markets in Sri Lanka, the Maldives and South Africa which he is planning to penetrate.
He said the potato exporters are happy to see that the government has increased the cash subsidy to the potato exporters to 20 per cent from 10 per cent. That shall be instrumental in attracting new entrepreneurs to this lucrative industry and will allow them to be price competitive internationally.
Source: thefinancialexpress-bd.com
