The Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC) will not be transformed into a holding company. The proposal given by finance ministry for turning the BJMC into a holding company has been called off.

State Minister for Textiles and Jute Mirza Azam offered the clarification, quashing a finance ministry proposal, at the session dedicated to the textiles and jute ministry at of DCs’ (deputy commissioner) conference in Dhaka.

The jute mill workers in many parts of the country have been agitating since June after the finance ministry proposed making the BJMC a holding company.

The BJMC was set up in 1972 with 77 jute mills to bring production and export of the golden fibre into an integrated system. At present, there are 26 jute mills under this autonomous body.

BJMC manufactures purchase jute from farmers through 182 procurement centres across Bangladesh to manufacture products in these jute mills.

A total of 82,000 employees and staff are involved in the entire system.

The state minister said that the government had reopened four closed textiles mills and plans to reopen others.