The Ngada Regency Government, East Nusa Tenggara, is optimizing the utilization of bamboo potential through the Turetogo Bamboo Market in the Ngada Bamboo Week Wolobobo Ngada Festival 2022. “This bamboo market raises the ecological concept of using bamboo with transactions using bamboo coins,” said Head of the Ngada Regency Tourism Office Oktavianus Botha Djawa at the Turetogo Bamboo Market, Bajawa, Sunday (18/9/2022). The Bamboo Market is one of the agenda items in the Ngada Bamboo Week at the 2022 Wolobobo Ngada Festival. Oktavianus explained that the Bamboo Market is a means to open up local people’s insight that regional potential can be processed and packaged into a new destination if it has good management.

This Bamboo Market is filled with community buying and selling activities with transactions using bamboo coins worth IDR 2,000 per coin. He considered the use of bamboo coins to make transactions more controlled and benefits more evenly distributed. There are several choices of products, both processed bamboo, agricultural products, and culinary. The Ngada Regency Government is pushing for the Bamboo Market concept to be replicated in several other places. Oktavianus hopes that there will be support from BUMDes and local communities so that bamboo can be preserved and provide added value to the community. “So far, many bamboo forests have been cut down and replaced with other commodities. With this, people can see, it can be a superior product,” he continued.

The Project Coordinator of the Bambu Lestari Foundation in Ngada Paskalis Lalu said the Bamboo Market is a people’s market with an affordable price approach. They prepared 2,500 coins to use for a day. Besides the Bamboo Market, Ngada Bamboo Week is also filled with bamboo processing, preservation, and talk shows involving various parties. Paskalis hopes that similar activities can be continued periodically in other places.

Source: https://kupang.antaranews.com/amp/berita/96601/ngada-optimalkan-pemanfaatan-bambu-lewat-pasar-bambu