Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
or even within a state becomes problematic as forest and other officials at
every check-point have to be satisfied that the bamboo being transported
has been from private lands and not from forest lands. Therefore, the pri-
mary hindrance in respect of commercialization of bamboo is transport
permits.
China successfully has been the main driving force in the global bam-
boo industry's development over the last 15 years, with a global share of
almost 80%. The total world market for bamboo is worth USD 7 billion/
year with handicrafts taking up just over 40%. Oxfam Hong Kong pre-
dicts that the global market will continue to grow to an estimated value
of USD 15-20 billion/year by 2017. India has opened its boundaries to
the market economy and is promoting itself as being on the crossroads
of trade between China and South-east Asia. Although policy reforms are
continuing, doing business in India is still a challenge for the private sec-
tor. Many have recognized the great potential of bamboo as an industry, be
it for handicrafts, shoots or industrial processing. Yet few countries have
so far been able to develop their bamboo industries beyond their tradi-
tional handicraft markets to exploit the huge potential for rural economic
growth and the resulting poverty reduction. While bamboo handicrafts ex-
ist around the world, the industrial bamboo subsector is too often notable
only by its absence. Considerable challenges exist for those aspiring to
replicate the success of regions such as Anji, Li'nan and Fujian in China.
Such leading regions and their associated industries have set the bench-
mark in terms of cost and efficiency of production, exploiting competitive
advantages from the development of dense industrial bamboo clusters. At
the same time they have seemingly lowered technical barriers to entry
by commercializing much of the technology and opening the markets to
bamboo-based products. So why, with available technologies, developing
markets and local bamboo resources, has it proved so difficult for others to
replicate the success of China or Vietnam? Why have industrial bamboos
clusters not emerged more widely and achieved the same large impacts
on rural development and poverty reduction? The challenge for those out-
side China (countries and regions as well as private enterprises) has been
how to make the transition from traditional, often small scale, processing
industries to the efficiencies and scale needed to compete in the world
market against China. China's leading bamboo regions have achieved re-
markable efficiencies in using every part of the bamboo that leaves the
forest - with raw material conversion rates often exceeding 95%, includ-
