Attitude to blame for low interest in paper bag sector

I refer to your article published on June 11, titled “Paper bag making fails to attract big investors”.One needs to understand the demand of the product before they can correctly say whether it should be served by small, medium or large companies. Demand for plain grocery bags in Rwanda stands at approximately 140 tonnes a month presently. Like the article mentioned, the use of polythene bags was banned in 2008, so it’s been five years since this ban. This market has traditionally been served initially by imports from Uganda and Kenya. SRB Investments Rwanda Limited. started its operations in May, 2011 and today we are catering to approximately 40 per cent of the market. Since our inception, the project has been blessed and supported thoroughly by Fina Bank at every step. Without their guidance, the project would not have been possible. Hence it’s totally wrong for one to say that financial institutions are not supporting this sector. If one has a viable business plan, the banks will provide the support. One of the concerns people have had for a long time is the cost of the paper bags, which they claim has increased the cost of the commodities in the market and made them (paper bags) uncompetitive. Let us look at a few examples; the cost of a paper bag in which 1kg of sugar is packed is Rwf10, while that for bread wrapping paper is Rwf35. If you calculate this as a percentage of the selling price of the goods, you can easily see that paper packaging is not responsible for the rising consumer prices and uncompetitivity in the industry. Globally, paper is one of the biggest industries. We are using paper for our printing, stationery, envelopes, exercise books, textbooks, carton boxes, cardboard boxes and even toilet paper. However, when it comes to saving the environment, why do we ‘turn against’ the paper bags? It would be good if consumers started re-using them rather than demanding for a paper bag whenever they buy anything in the market. If we study the source for the manufacture of the paper – there are two sources: recycled paper and virgin pulp, which is basically got from the trees. Trees are cut for the manufacture of the paper pulp, but most of these are today coming from sustainable forests and paper manufacturers are clearly mandated and regulated to replace the cut trees. From a regulatory point of view, it is also much easier to monitor and control the manufacturers and source of material against disposal of plastic bags which is a big nuisance to control for any country. One does not have to go too far to see the mess created by the polythene bags in Uganda. We should also be proud of the cleanliness levels that have been achieved in Rwanda. Today whenever someone visits the country they are always amazed by the level of the cleanliness here, which can be partly attributed to the ban of the polythene bags. Unfortunately, this is a factor which does not get quantified but if we see the effect of this on people’s lives it will surely be a plus. However, what surprises me most is that even after five years of the ban on polythene bags, we are still debating the issue of polythene bags against paper bags and then complaining that there is no large investment in the sector of paper bags. If we as a country are still debating this issue, why would any investor want to put their money in such an environment of business uncertainty? We should rather embrace the stand taken by the Rwanda Environment Management Authority and close this debate and then watch the growth this sector can witness. It’s not the market size which is hindering the growth of this industry, but rather our attitude to this sector. The writer is the SRB Investments Rwanda Limited general manager.The firm is involved in paper bag making