Bamboo and rattan products (Photo: dangcongsan.vn)
In bamboo and rattan handicraft trade villages, standstill production, a lack of consumption, unplanned material areas and weak trade promotion are hurting the industry.
In early April in Hanoi, at a seminar on Vietnam’s bamboo and rattan trade held by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Agro-Forestry-Aquatic Product Trading, Processing and Salt Industry Department and Vietnam Association of Craft Villages (Vicrafts) announced these obstacles to the public.
80 percent of production establishments meet difficulty
Luu Duy Dan, Chairman of Vicrafts, said that the whole country has 713 bamboo and rattan craft villages, which account for 24 percent of the total craft villages and attract approximately 350,000 employees. Since 2009, famous bamboo and rattan villages such as Phu Nghia, Chuong conical hat village, the Vac village, Chang Son and Phu Tuc of Hanoi have met difficulties due to unstable market conditions and perfunctory production.
Craftsman Ta Thu Huong from the Chuong conical hat village in the Thanh Oai district of Hanoi, said that previously high-qualified conical hats with good designs were at least VND120,000/hat, but now the price has dropped to VND50,000/hat. She notes that the price of raw materials is rising, creating multiple difficulties for production establishments.
So far, Vietnam has hundreds of businesses and thousands of employees who participate in processing bamboo and rattan products. However, the biggest difficulty of the businesses today is instable consumption.
According to the Vicrafts, 80 percent of the production establishment are not making enough capital to expand their production scale and invest in technological innovations. Additionally, they lack the funds to advertise their products widely. Local consumers do not have access to information about these products so they do not know the benefits of purchasing the products.
Restructuring product
According to Mr. Nguyen Manh Dung from the Agro-Forestry-Aquatic Product Trading, Processing and Salt Industry Department, to stabilize and expand the market of these products, the craft villages need to quickly change product restructuring. 95% of the total value of the bamboo and rattan industry focuses on traditional products and only 5% of value is industrial processing so economic efficiency is not high.
He also said that from 2020 to 2030, the industry must change the product structure, which includes 30 percent of products made using traditional processing techniques and the other 70 percent produced using industrial techniques. By changing the current product structure, the value of the production is estimated to rise to USD1 billion.
According to forecasts, demands of the raw material of craft villages will require at least one billion bamboo trees per year by 2020. To meet this demand, the country needs to plant about 60,000 hectares of bamboo and invest in wild bamboo conservation.
In the future, the state must plan and develop bamboo and rattan material areas in the appropriate localities as well as encourage businesses to invest in the sector and farmers to change the inefficient trees into rattan, bamboo.
Additionally, the Government should implement policies on financial support for enterprises and households as well as promote new market strategies for rattan and bamboo production consumption. In particular, enterprises and villages should research the current consumer market to produce appropriate products and register intellectual property rights in order to create a new look for their products./.
Đăng ký: VietNam News
