Owing to shortage of fairly priced cotton, dyes and chemicals along with shortage of capital and absence of modern cloth processing centres, several handloom units in Bangladesh are facing closure. According to the industry estimates, around 1,92,000 handloom units out of 0.5 million in the country have closed down and many others are on the verge of shutting due to above mentioned reasons.

Handloom is the country’s second largest labour intensive sector for rural employment after agriculture. Over 1.5 million people are employed in the sector directly or indirectly. The segment has been seeking government intervention in reviving the units. Apart from competitively priced raw material, handloom owners are not getting financial support or whatever little they are getting is not enough to meet the needs. The government had last supported in 1998 sanctioning Tk 500 million to disburse at the rate of Tk 12,000 per head among weavers as loan. But weavers claim that the amount is not sufficient to meet even their minimum requirement.

However, Bangladesh Handloom Board has been taking initiatives like the BMRE (balance, modernise, rehabilitate and expand) of the cloth processing centre (CPC) in Narsingdi at a cost of Tk 297.21million. It has also initiated to establish another three different types of service centres at a cost of Tk 460.52 million.The board proposes to provide facilities like washing, dyeing, calendaring, printing, finishing and some other facilities to the weavers.

www.bhb.gov.bd