Sources in the Indian jute industry said that the members of the organisation are not too happy with the food grade jute bags exported by Bangladesh. "The global cocoa consumers and growers feel that the Bangladeshis are not maintaining the proper standards as expected. Instead, they are quite happy with the quality of the Indian products and time and again they have expressed this preference," sources said.

Food grade jute bags are a specially quality of sacking which is free from all sorts of hydrocarbon material. The coarse raw jute fibre is softened before being twined into ropes for making jute sacks. Till date the softener used in the jute mills was a petroleum based oil. This oil is harmful to human health. So jute industry, despite producing a superior quality of the packaging material was unable to win the food grains'export market.

Indian Jute Industries Research Association (IJIRA) developed a special lubricant called RBO for this purpose. RBO is made from the non-edible portion of the rice bran oil. IJIRA also has its own quality inspection centre and it is being regularly used by the Indian jute industry.

Industry sources said that Bangladesh does not have any such inspection centre. "The Bangladeshi jute mills themselves issue a quality certificate stating that it has been tested by its own quality inspection systems. The global players are not too happy with this," sources said.

Moreover, Bangladesh is yet to develop RBO. At present, they are using a vegetable oil and it is not liked by the global cocoa growers and consumers. International Cocoa Organisation is also trying to develop certain parameters for the maintaining the quality of the food grade jute bags.

Sutirtha Bhattacharya, secretary of the Jute Manufactures Development Council, the official export promotional body of the jute industry, said thatIndian jute industry is about to tap a huge export market. "We have successfully demonstrated our product, the food grade jute bag, in the international markets. Now it is just a matter of time for the orders to pour in. We are expecting a market to tune of 50 to 100 thousand tonnes, in terms of quanity. In value terms it will be around Rs 250 crore," Bhattacharya said.

Last year, Indian jute industry exported around 10,000 tonnes of food grade jute bags. However, Bhattacharya added: "The exports were mostly for the peanut, hazelnut and shell nut sectors and some for coffee. There was hardly any off-take from the cocoa sector."

An industry observer, however, feel that it is now the job of the individual jute mills to get the orders. "The promotion of the product among the growers and consumers of food grains world over has been successful. The generic promotion has been made. Now the mills will have to persuade the buyers for the orders. A broad promotion at this point will not be too effective," theobserver said.

India is the largest producer of jute goods in the world. During 1997-98 the production of jute goods was an all-time record of 16.78 lakh tonnes as against 14 lakh tonnes in 1996-97. Production during 1998-99 (April to October) also recorded an increase by one per cent and reached 9.37 lakh tonnes from 9.32 lakh tonnes during the same period last year.