“We’ll have to spread jute products throughout the world branding those as environment-friendly ones. If we can do that, we'll get a larger market (for jute products) and can earn more foreign currencies,” she said.

The Prime Minister said this while speaking at the National Jute Day-2019 programme and inaugurating a two-day Multipurpose Jute Product Fair at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre (BICC) in the city.

Sheikh Hasina urged all concerned to take necessary steps for making the jute sector profitable. 

“Jute is such a produce, nothing of which is wasted. So, why’ll it incur losses? I don’t want to hear (the news of) losses. Attention is needed for making it profitable,” she said.

The Prime Minister said the jute products will get incentives both as an agricultural produce and industrial product.

“We'll definitely make it (jute sector) profitable through diversifying the jute products. I believe it,” she said urging all concerned to assessing the local demand of jute products alongside exporting these.

She said the Export Policy 2018-2021 has already been declared. “It’ll have to concentrate on further increasing the export of jute goods,” she added.

Hasina said many products, including 'Sonali Bags', are now being produced from jute which is called gold fibre.

The Sonali Bag has created huge prospects for the country’s jute sector, the Prime Minister said.

She stressed the need for exploring markets through studying the demand of jute products across the world.

The Prime Minister said jute has a good prospect as people are now aware about the environment. “This environmental awareness has created a good prospect for our environment-friendly jute products.”

Jute is an agricultural product and it is also an industrial product at the same time, which is an environment-friendly one. “So, there’s a huge prospect for the country’s jute sector.”

The Prime Minister said the government has been supporting research on jute and providing incentives to the sector for utilising everything of jute.

She said once the jute sector had been ignored by subsequent governments after 1975, but her government gave importance to the development of the sector again. “Returning to power, our government made efforts to further development of jute as cash corps through its multipurpose usages by boosting its production protecting it,” she said.

Sheikh Hasina urged the private sector and entrepreneurs to come up with more investment in the jute sector to boost the production and export of the environment-friendly jute products so that Bangladesh could earn lager foreign currencies from the sector.

She said the government will provide incentives to the private entrepreneurs in the jute sector like other sectors.

The Ministry of Textiles and Jute organised the function with Textiles and Jute Minister Golam Dastagir Gazi in the chair.

Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Textiles and Jute MirzaAzam spoke on the occasion as a special guest.

At the function, the Prime Minister handed over National Jute Award among 14 individuals and organisations under 14 categories for their contributions to the jute sector development.

The 14 categories include best jute grower, best jute seed producer, best raw jute exporter, best jute product producer government jute mill, best jute product producer private jute mill, best multi-jute exporter private jute mill, best jute product exporter private mill, best multi-jute product exporter private mill, best multipurpose jute products producer entrepreneur and best multipurpose jute products producer female entrepreneur.

Later, the Prime Minister visited different stalls of the fair. 
Some 280 kinds of jute products are being displayed at the two-day fair.