National Bamboo Mission launches MIS module for strengthening domestic Agarbatti industry

New Delhi [India], May 11 (ANI): The National Bamboo Mission has launched an MIS (Management Information Systems) based reporting platform for agarbatti stick production to collate the locations of stick making units, availability of raw material, functioning of the units, production capacity, marketing, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare on Tuesday.
The ministry stated that with the help of this module, the linkages with the industry will be synergised better to enable seamlessly procurement from production units and information gaps can be plugged.
All National Bamboo Mission (NBM) states are in the process of documenting all the units to assess better how further support can be given for 'Vocal for Local' and 'Make for the World' since Indian agarbatti are much sought after in global markets, said the ministry.
According to the ministry, the National Bamboo Mission, Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) schemes as well as the states, together with the industry partners have stepped up focused support to enable India to become Atma Nirbhar in the agarbatti sector, to bring back livelihoods for the local communities while at the same time modernising the sector too.
The agarbatti sector traditionally provided large scale employment to the local workforce, which however dwindled due to various factors including the ingress of cheap imports of round sticks and raw batti, stated the ministry.
A comprehensive study was carried out by NBM in 2019 following which policy measures taken by the Government of moving raw batti imports from free to restricted category in Aug 2019 and increasing import duty on round stick uniformly to 25 per cent in June 2020 came as a boost to the domestic units.
The restructured National Bamboo Mission (NBM) was launched in 2018-19 for holistic development of the bamboo sector through a cluster-based approach in a hub (industry) and spoke model to harness the opportunities by providing backward and forward linkages among the stakeholders - linking farmers to markets.
According to the ministry, a direct subsidy of 50 per cent is given to farmers at Rs 1.00 lakh per ha, 100 per cent to Government agencies and also to entrepreneurs for setting up various product development units, etc. The Mission is presently being executed by 21 States, including all the nine states of the North Eastern Region (NER) through the respective State Bamboo Missions.
NBM is also advising States to make available quality planting material to the farmers out to carry out plantations of commercially required species, set up common facility centres and other post-harvest units in complete sync with the requirement of existing and sunrise industries for a win-win situation for farmers and Indian bamboo industry. (ANI)