Plans to boost Sri Lanka's bamboo industry

The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) launched the first national bamboo processing initiative in Colombo last week.

The 'Bamboo Processing for Sri Lanka', a UNIDO-Government of Sri Lanka-GEF initiative aims at developing a bamboo supply chain and process industry in the country.

Head of UNIDO, Colombo, Nawaz Rajabdeen said, "This initiative is expected to develop a new industrial bamboo sector in Sri Lanka to make it internationally competitive and also to be a provider for food, flooring, and alternative biomass energy, among others. The targeted beneficiaries are rural households which harvest bamboo from the countryside and river banks."

"More importantly, we believe that bamboo can give livelihood at village levels by direct and indirect employment and also act as feedstock for biomass - in that can also be able to address fuel wood demand for the domestic and industrial sectors which has shown a steady increase during the past few years," he said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Industries and Commerce said that it is time to develop the cultivation first as there are no large scale bamboo plantations in Sri Lanka either by the public or private sector.

About 14 varieties of bamboo are grown in the country across all climatic zones of Sri Lanka, including in the arid areas. Kalutara is the region with highest bamboo growth. Currently bamboo cultivation is done in the country by informal sectors in small scale, except the cultivations under the Riverine Bamboo Project of Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka. The Sri Lanka Forestry Master Plan of 1995 identified that protection of bamboos of the country 'to be a priority.'

Nawaz Rajabdeen said that Sri Lanka's current bamboo cultivation could be valued at Rs 220 m ($ 1.99 m) with an estimated coverage extent of 5,166 ha of which 2,500 ha are grown by the Mahaweli Authority. The Authority cultivates them in marginal tea lands and river banks of the Mahaweli zone and added: "Another 2666 ha are estimated to be spread across the rest of the country, with Kalutara and Kurunegala Districts holding the bulk of it."

The Mahaweli Authority has planted 500,000 bamboo plants since 2006 to to-date. No estimates on Sri Lanka's annual bamboo production values are collated to-date due to the informal nature of this sector.

"UNIDO has been involved in the world's bamboo industry for the last 11 years. We plan 2,000 hectares of new bamboo cultivation annually in Sri Lanka from 2012, and envisage 10,000 ha of bamboo across the country by 2018," UNIDO team leader Antonio Levissianos said adding, "In Sri Lanka, UNIDO started the initial background work on the bamboo sector two years ago."

"Promising bamboo products and applications specially in the context of Sri Lanka are the boat industry, pellets, wood substitutes, as an energy source, plywood source, laminated wood, and for wood flooring," said Levissianos.

"The key objective is to secure the raw material supply for a formal bamboo industry through the development of industrial strength bamboo plantations. Once we get bamboo supply at industrial levels we can use it as a substitute product and also for value addition on a large scale," he said.

"UNIDO is keen to see Sri Lanka's restrictions on bamboo transportation lifted so that the industry can take off and farmer income could increase," Levissianos said. "The initial value chain is first pre-processing at village level which is then supplied to bigger industries" he said.