Morung Express News
Dimapur | July 26
With the existing regulatory regime deterring investment in the sector and inhibiting the pace of growth in bamboo and its related activities, stakeholders believe that reviewing and fine-tuning regulations will significantly boost the growth of the bamboo sector as an industry.
With this as the mission objective, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) together with stakeholders has been lobbying for introducing uniform guidelines for the bamboo sector nationwide. As part of the objective, the CII in collaboration with the Nagaland Bamboo Development Agency (NBDA) organised the third in a series of round table discussions on ‘Bamboo Transit and Regulatory Regime in North East India’ on July 26 at the Bamboo Resource Centre, Dimapur.
Resource persons from the Government of India, CII, Nagaland State government and entrepreneurs from the NE region participated in the daylong discussions. Minister for Forest, Environment & Wildlife, Dr. Nicky Kire; Parliamentary Secretary for Industries & Commerce, Amenba Yaden and Advisor, NBDA, Naiba Konyak also addressed the inaugural session. Evolving actionable agenda for streamlining the bamboo access and transfer regime formed the basis of the discussions with Neichute Doulo, chairman of the CII’s Nagaland State Council maintaining that policy and regulation should act as promoter and not as deterrent.
Varying forests royalties imposed on bamboo in transit besides others are eating into the economic prospects of bamboo as an industry, whose workforce mainly comprise of the marginalised rural communities.
Amenba Yaden pointed out that constraints imposed within the state and beyond on “transit pass” among others is limiting the growth of the sector. This calls for formulating a standard national norm to remove hindrances pertaining to movement of bamboo and its products, he stated.
