DHAKA: Tea prices in Bangladesh fell 3.5 percent at the weekly auction Tuesday due to large supplies of inferior-quality leaf despite a drop in volume on offer.
According to details, Bangladeshi tea fetched an average of 161.58 taka ($2.13) per kg at the auction, compared with 167.50 taka in the previous sale.
The volume of poor-grade leaf was higher and that contributed to a drop in both prices and sales volume, a senior official at National Brokers said. There was, however, strong demand for quality tea which helped cap a steep drop in prices, the official added.
About 39 percent of the 2.7 million kg offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong was unsold. In the previous auction, about 36 percent of the 2.76 million kg on offer remained unsold.
Bangladesh’s tea production in 2016 is expected to have risen to a record 80 million kg from 66 million kg a year earlier, the Commerce Minister has said, output that may be big enough to make imports unnecessary.
