DHAKA: Tea prices in Bangladesh rose on Tuesday thanks to the arrival of fresh, quality leaves for the first auction of the new season, brokers said.
Bangladeshi tea fetched an average of 208.47 taka ($2.60) per kg, up from 194.27 taka at the last auction of the previous season, as major buyers returned to the market, National Brokers said in a market report.
About 20 percent of the 1.32 million kg offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong remained unsold. In the previous auction on March 21, about 1 percent of the 842,944 kg on offer was unsold.
Bangladesh’s tea output in 2016 rose by nearly 27 percent from a year earlier to a record 85 million kg, a harvest that may be big enough to make imports unnecessary.
Bangladeshi buyers, however, have imported tea in bulk from India, Thailand and Malaysia, contributing to a glut in the domestic market and reducing demand at auctions, industry sources said.
