Jorhat, March 13: A Rs 18 lakh per kg international market but a convoluted government policy that prohibits agarwood export has provoked scientists today to call for easing of restrictions.
The scientists had assembled at the national seminar on Advances on Agarwood ( xansi) Research in India at the Rain Forest Research Institute at Sotai, 17km from here.
Rajib Kumar Borah, scientist E of the institute, asked the scientists, planters, entrepreneurs and foresters to come together and ask the government to frame a policy to benefit agarwood planters to get maximum benefit from the trade, which exists as a non-organised sector in the Northeast. With the declaration of the tree as vulnerable in Appendix II of the IUCN Red list of threatened species in 1996, the Centre banned felling in the wilds, which produces the precious oil. In 2004 the felling of all the eight Aquilaria species, which produced the oil used in perfumery and me-dicine industry, was banned.
The trees are not found in the wilds of Assam, having been indiscriminately harvested for their valuable oil.
Borah said the Asian regional workshop on the management of wild and planted agarwood in Guwahati from January 19-23 by Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the International Timber Traders Organisation had addressed the issue. At the workshop, the government had been asked to conduct a non-detriment study to determine the traded volume in agarwood and the survivability of the species that produce the oil.
M. Ahmed, former scientist, Assam Agricultural University, said a registration process has to be gone through and then a transit permit can be easily procured to trade in the item within India.
Sahidul Hussain, who has set up a plantation at Kakojan, said he had applied a year ago at the forest department in Jorhat but the response was that there is no manpower to go and tag the trees.
Tika Sangrowla of Rowta, Udalguri district, with 400 trees on his plantation and Khanindra Ray of Bongaigaon with 4,000 trees, did not know how they would be able to harvest and sell their produce. "I am the only one cultivating the trees in Bongaigaon on such a large scale but the forest department officials seem to be ignorant about the registration of aromatic trees there," Ray said.
So what will he do?
"Like ganja from different places can be found in Delhi, the illegal trade of agar oil and wood is flourishing here and abroad. But this is not the way we want it. The government can fix a royalty and we would harvest like any other agro-forestry produce," he said.
On export, the government policy was that agarwood could be imported, processed here and then the distilled oil exported.
M. Ahmed said on a visit to Dubai, the people whom he had spoken to had not heard of India or Assam but when asked about Hojai, there were shouts of " Marhabba, marhabba" and references to the good quality agar oil which came from there.
He, however, asserted that the best quality agarwood was produced in Sivasagar, Jorhat and Golaghat districts where the soil was most acidic.
N.S. Bisht, the director of the institute, also spoke of the economic uplift of the region if the restrictions were eased.
S.C. Nath, scientist and taxonomist, North East Institute of Science and Technology and Padmeswar Gogoi, former professor at DR College, Golaghat and pioneer researcher into Aquilaria malaccensis also hoped that the government would formulate a clear-cut policy soon.
