President Museveni woos India's banana stem processor

President Yoweri Museveni has pledged to provide land in Mbarara to prospective Indian Investors who are proposing to set up a factory that uses banana stems to produce a wide range of products including liquid fertiliser, thread, cloth and biogas among other things.

The President who was yesterday meeting Uganda's Honorary Consul of Uganda in Mumbai, India H.E Madhusudan Agrawal at State House Entebbe said the banana stem liquid fertiliser project heralds a great initiative that is not only great for the environment but will also lead to other products including cloth, thread, biogas production and job creation.

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Accompanied by Uganda's Deputy Speaker of Parliament Hon. Thomas Tayebwa, Agrawal who is also the Vice-Chairman, of Ajanta Pharma Ltd which is a multinational company based in India engaged in developing, manufacturing and marketing pharmaceutical formulations informed the President, that their research in processing banana stem enzymes to make fertilizer has already succeeded in over 30,000 farms in India and has been approved by the EU and the Indian governments.

He said they are committed to investing over US$100million into a Banana Stem processing factory in Mbarara Uganda over a 30 months period to establish a stem processing factory that will see Uganda produce 1 million litres of organic liquid fertilizer per day.

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"The factory will consume about 160,000 stems per day. We also hope to get fibre for clothes and threads," he said. The factory is proposed to be located in the central banana producing region of Mbarara.

Banana is one of the most well-known and useful plants in the world with all the parts including fruit, leaves, flower bud, trunk and stem exploited for various uses.

The Banana fibre can be used to fabricate rope, threads, mats, paper cardboard, teabags, textile, absorbent and polymer/fibre composite manure