DHAKA: Tea prices dipped sharply at Bangladesh’s weekly auction, dragged down by inferior leaf quality despite lower volumes on offer. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average price of 215.21 taka ($2.80) per kg at Tuesday’s auction, compared with a revised price of 229.60 taka in the previous sale, National Brokers said. The volume of poor-grade leaf was higher and that contributed to a sharp decline in prices, while supplies were lower than last week, a senior National Brokers official said.
About 35 per cent of the 2.4 million kg offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong was unsold, compared with 39.5 per cent unsold of the 2.5 million kg offered at the previous auction.
Bangladesh’s tea production jumped nearly 27 per cent in 2016 to a record 85 million kg, helped by favourable weather, making imports a choice rather than necessity.
The South Asian country was the world’s fifth-largest tea exporter in the 1990s but is now a net importer because of a surge in domestic consumption in line with economic growth.
