Vocal for local: NBM launches MIS platform to strengthen domestic agarbatti industry

The government on Tuesday said a management information system (MIS) has been launched under the National Bamboo Mission (NBM) for strengthening the domestic agarbatti industry.

The MIS will collate data on agarbatti stick production, the locations of stick making units, availability of raw material, functioning of the units, production capacity, marketing, etc.

"With the help of this module, the linkages with the industry will be synergised better to enable seamless procurement from production units and information gaps can be plugged," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

All NBM states are in the process of documenting all the units to assess better how to further support can be given for 'Vocal for Local' and 'Make for the World' since Indian agarbatti are much sought after in global markets, it said.

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The National Bamboo Mission (NBM), launched in 2018-19 for the holistic development of the bamboo sector, is presently being implemented in 21 states, including nine states of the north-eastern region.

The ministry further said 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.

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 the restricted category in August 2019 and increasing import duty on round stick uniformly to 25 percent in June 2020 came as a boost to the domestic units, it added.

Through NBM, the Centre is also advising states to make available quality planting material to the farmers 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.