Leyte as Bamboo Corp, any taker? (1)

There should be commercialization in anything that we do because we have many projects in the government but at the end of the process, people are not getting any income.

The concept of communities acting as a business concern gets noticed as a viable option to speed up development in the countryside.

Mayors of different Leyte municipalities are seriously considering going into large-scale bamboo production not only as their contribution to climate change mitigation but also as a solution to the perennial problem of flooding and soil erosion while providing an alternative enterprise for farmers.

But if former Agriculture Secretary Manny Piñol could have his way, he wanted Leyte to become the first to come up with a local government unit-led bamboo manufacturing operation, which he coined as Leyte Bamboo Corporation, a concept of a sustainable and economic benefit-driven greening program.

“This calls for all municipalities and cities, with the provincial government as the lead LGU, to organize themselves into a corporation involved in the propagation, production, processing, marketing, and export of bamboo,” he said.

“There should be commercialization in anything that we do because we have many projects in the government but at the end of the process, people are not getting any income. They would lose interest.”

The proposal is for each of the 40 municipalities in Leyte to plant 5,000 giant bamboo saplings, or a total of 200,000 saplings, either in LGU-owned lots or through individual farmer cooperatives to serve as the pilot production area. One hectare of land can plant 200 bamboo trees.

Big demand for bamboo

Pi ñ ol said bamboo farms will be the source of propagules where each pole can generate 20 planting materials to harvest. “This will create a fast expansion of the project. It will also be a source of 100,000 metric tons of bamboo poles for processing in the fifth year of the program,” he added.

He said there is a big demand for bamboo not only for local consumption but also for export. The current market price for bamboo, he said, is P3 per kilo. With a hectare of land producing 100 tons of bamboo poles per year, he said a farmer can earn an estimated P300,000 per hectare per year starting in the fifth year.

Bamboo poles can also be processed into engineered bamboo products for construction and furniture making which can create local jobs and increase their value.

But even in the third year of the project, Piñol said it can already start a modest livelihood program for women in the communities through a program of harvesting the shoots to produce pickled bamboo shoots for the local and export market which is already being done in Vietnam where bottled and canned pickled bamboo shoots are exported to the United States and Europe.

Despite the picture of a bright future for the local bamboo industry, Leyte Governor Carlos Jericho Petilla is wary of having the program led by the provincial government. He said the proposal has to be studied carefully.

“The government is good because it has resources but it is also bad because it is temporary. Once you have a change of leadership in the local government, everything changes as well,” he said.

Petilla said the LGU can be an enabler but not a proponent. “It can make the rules, and policies that people will follow; make policies that will encourage a businessman. That is the primary role of the government,” he said.

“Secretary Piñol wants it with a bit of a twist so we will study it on how we can gel the government and the private sector without actually compromising the role of the government,” he said.

He said to make the proposed Leyte Bamboo Corporation sustainable it should involve the private sector. “If there are commercials involved and the commercials are good, the private sector will stick with it,” he said. “This needs a long chat with the private sector.”

“As the enabler, I can ask the mayors like can you waive business permits for five years for all bamboo-related businesses? Can you lease at a low cost your idle lands to the private sector for a limited number of years?” he said.

To be continued