Agartala: Two Mumbai-based entrepreneurs have expressed interest in making bamboo-based products like handicrafts, furniture and sticks for Agarbatti (incense stick) making, official sources said on Sunday.
“They have agreed to invest Rs. 80 crore for setting up two industrial units – at the proposed Bamboo Park at Bodhjungnagar – and have already bought five acres of land from us”, Chairman of Tripura Industrial Development Corporation said.
Chief Minister Manik Sarkar laid the foundation stone for the Bamboo Park on January 27 which aimed to ensure value addition to bamboo and also to ensure the rise in economic standards by the increase in production of bamboo based products.
The central government has sanctioned Rs. 29 crore for its development, spread over 69 acres of land which is just 12 km from here.
“Now infrastructures like roads, provision for water and electricity are being built which is likely to be completed by next six to seven months”, he added.
Tripura has registered a 240 per cent absolute growth rate and 35.8 per cent compound annual growth rate in the production of bamboo-based products like handicrafts, furniture and sticks for Agarbatti-making.
Expressing satisfaction at the growth rate, state’s Forest Minister, Jitendra Chowdhury, informed Tripura assembly last month that there had been a commensurate increase in the revenue also.
“While in 2006-07 our turn-over was Rs 28 crore, it grew more than three fold at Rs 93.05 crore this year which represents a 240 per cent absolute growth rate,” Chowdhury said.
Buoyed by the development, the state government has set an ambitious target of Rs 200 crore per annum by 2016.
The minister, who also holds the industry portfolio, said the state earned 80 per cent of its profit in bamboo products by making sticks for Agarbatti which met 60 per cent of the country’s total demand for the product.
He said the state had set a target of Rs 54 crore as revenue next year, compared to Rs 30.93 crore this year, from the sale of bamboo and handicrafts alone. (PTI)