Bangladesh:
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change has recommended that Bangladesh classify rubber as an agricultural product, following the examples set by India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Vietnam.
The committee has also requested the preparation of an updated list detailing areas where rubber plantations may become unsustainable within the next decade, along with an updated inventory of both public and private rubber plantations in the country. These will be presented in the upcoming meeting.
the committee stressed the importance of increasing the budget for enhancing the research activities of the Bangladesh Forest Research Institute, as a measure to strengthen the nation’s research efforts.
Additionally, they recommended leasing the Regional Bamboo Research Center, located in Domar Upazila of Nilphamari District, as it is currently non-functional.
There are 17 government rubber plantations under Forest Industries Development Corporation in Bangladesh. Among them, there are eight gardens in the Chittagong zone, five in the Tangail-Mymensingh zone, and four in the Sylhet zone.
In Bhatera, Satgaon, Shahji Bazar, and Rupaichara Bagan of Sylhet region, rubber is cultivated on a total of eight thousand 442 acres of land. Apart from this, there are hundreds of private and privately owned rubber plantations in the Sylhet region.
In total, rubber is cultivated in about 70 thousand acres of land in the country. 16 to 20 thousand tons of rubber is produced annually in the country. The demand for this product in the domestic market is 30 thousand tons per year.
The scraps collected from the plantations are processed into rubber sheets in various factories established in the Sylhet region. Then it went to different factories in Dhaka and Chittagong. Various products including car tires, tubes, shoe soles, foam, Rexin, hosepipe, gum, and toys are made with rubber.
