INTEGRATED PROTECTED AREA CO-MANAGEMENT (IPAC) - BIDS

nets” to the collectors, along with adequate amount of credits for the collectors on favorable
terms 96 . At the same time, the banks can also help promote the effort of conservation while
sanctioning loans. Repayment schedules and horizons should be flexible and reflect the likely
cash flow of the activities in question. Proper monitoring mechanism should be in place that
would assess that their incomes have been raised and debt burdens have been reduced.
At the first stage, some priority sectors can be taken up for the purpose on a pilot basis. At the
same time, appropriate authority should take safety net programs for the SRF actors,
particularly the collectors, and extend support during lean periods or at the time of crisis such as
natural hazards. Like what was taken up with SMEs, the Bangladesh Bank can take the
initiatives in this respect through, for example, launching refinancing schemes.
Improving Terms of Trade and Marketing System
Our field survey shows there are many ways of debt repayment in practice - repayment in cash
with interest (47.6%) or without interest (4.0%), repayment in goods at market price (16.7%)
and repayment at reduced market price (33.3%) (See Chapter 3). Our investigation reveals that
the collectors have to sell their collected products at a price reduced by approximately 22.5
percent compared to prevailing market price.
In order to pull the SRF harvesters out of poverty better contracting arrangements would be
helpful. There can be several ways of improving terms of trade and marketing systems for the
SRF products.
Transportation and Storage/Depot Facilities
The cost of transportation and the time needed in transportation are very crucial for the
collectors, especially the fishers, golpata or honey collectors. The study reveals that economics
of SRF extraction is directly related to distance of primary landing place from harvest place
(which is 41 Km), which enhances transportation costs (See Chapter 3). One important way in
this regard is to foster and expand spot markets and auctions, which will reduce transportation
costs and at the same time ensure offering lower level actors higher prices 97 . Increasing the
number of depots and landing places could also minimize the transaction costs in the value
chains and the time for transportation to ensure that the returns are evenly distributed. This
would help particularly fishery sector. The Department of Fisheries needs to identify regions
lacking depots and arrange accordingly. Increasing the number of depots and landing places was
suggested by a large number of poor harvesters (See Chapter 3). It is also important to develop
linkages between collectors and relevant processing plants, which is expected to reduce the
number of intermediaries.
Enhancing Bargaining Power of the Collectors
During our survey, a large number of collectors (66%) complained that they were not getting fair
prices for the harvested products (See Chapter 3) while 47 percent reported that there were
limited number of buyers (e.g., Aratdars) so that the buyers could easily monopolize. In
96 Currently, the government has a number of safety-net programs implemented in coastal areas but hardly any of
these are specifically targeted to SRF stakeholders, except only a few targeted to fishermen in lean seasons.
97 This was also suggested by a study by USAID (2006)
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