DHAKA: Tea prices in Bangladesh fell at the weekly auction, snapping a two-week run of gains, but strong demand for quality leaf capped a steeper decline amid tight supplies.
Bangladeshi tea fetched an average price of 234.43 taka ($2.80) per kg at the auction on Tuesday, compared with 236.72 taka at the previous sale, National Brokers said.
There was muted demand from buyers, but strong demand for quality leaf helped limit a steep drop in prices when supplies were lower than last week, a senior official with National Brokers said.
Around 8.7 per cent of the 2.36 million kg offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong remained unsold. In the previous auction, 14.8 percent of the 2.55 million kg on offer was unsold.
Bangladesh’s tea production rose nearly 27 per cent last year to a record 85 million kg, a harvest that was seen as big enough to make imports unnecessary. The South Asian country was the world’s fifth-largest tea exporter in the 1990s but is now a net importer due to a surge in domestic consumption.
