US $1.5 million earmarked for bamboo industry

The Ghana government has earmarked at least US $1.5 million for a local nongovernmental body to develop the bamboo and rattan industry as an alternate to the country's timber, the Accra mail, an online news provider, reported on Tuesday. Lands and Forest Minister Kasim Kasanga announced the offer on Monday when he launched the Bamboo and Rattan Network, Barnet, at the 12-day Ghana International Trade Fair at La, in Accra. Barnet, a NGO founded a year ago, "would draw attention to the importance of bamboo as a supplement to wood", the newspaper reported. Barnet would also serve as a link to foreign expertise and with similar organisations worldwide, it added. Bamboo's advantage over other hardwoods, Kasanga said, was its short gestation period of five years. It can, he added, be used in building and construction, pulpwood, floor tiles, panel products and furniture. Ghana's timber industry needs about four million cubic metres of logs each year, Kasanga said, of which 2.5 million cu.m. are used domestically and 1.5 million cu.m. exported. "He observed, however, that an expanding need of wood for fuel against an annual permissible cut of one million cubic metres implied that the total demand for wood was more than three times the allowable cut and the long gestation period of timber indicated a precarious situation and a matter of concern to most investors and plantation developers" the newspaper reported. An executive member of Barnet, Armstrong Mensah, said it planned to develop 20,000 ha of bamboo annually and create 500,000 jobs within the next five years.