Govt to ease environment clearance for textile, cement industries

The environment ministry is going to revise the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) guidelines to enhance the ease of doing business.

Textile and cement industries might be allowed to take single EIA clearance certificates, exempting from eight separate clearances, to ease time and wastage of money, according to minutes of a meeting recently held at the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

The amendment will be brought to the EIA under a World Bank project, Jobs Development Policy Credit 3, said the minutes.

“We’re preparing to amend the EIA guidelines for setting up different types of industries across the country,” Environment Secretary Ziaul Hasan told the Business Insider Bangladesh recently.

The EIA guidelines will be amended after taking opinions from the stakeholders, he said.

The air pollution issue, which is absent in the existing guidelines, will be included in the revised EIA, said Professor Shoeb Ahmed at the Department of Chemical Engineering of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

A tanner needs to get the Department of Environment’s clearance for obtaining another clearance from the global rights body International Leather Working Group (LWG), said Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters Association President Mohiuddin Ahmed Mahin welcoming the environment ministry’s move.

“If the Department of Environment provides the clearance in favour of LWG, it will ease the businesses for tanners,” he said.

As many as 123 tanneries have so far been set up in the Savar Leather Industrial Park. Of them, three to four tanneries renewed their clearances from the Department of Environment as per rules. Only two of them received LWG certificates.

Textile and garment sectors contribute 81.43 percent of the total exports of the country. On the other hand, the cement industry’s contribution in export is very minimal.