Tea prices in Bangladesh rose at a weekly auction on Tuesday after falling nearly 10 percent in the previous four sessions, on strong demand from buyers amid tight supplies, brokers said. The average price of Bangladeshi tea was 196.03 taka ($2.4) per kg against 190.67 taka at a sale last week, said an official at the country’s largest tea broking firm, National Brokers Limited.
Around 1.86 million kg of tea was offered at Bangladesh’s sole auction centre in Chittagong, with 5.20 percent unsold. That compared with 16.30 percent unsold in the previous auction, when 2.1 million kg was offered. «Prices made a fairly good recovery this week following much more activity from all sections of the market,» National Brokers said in its market report.
Around 2 million kg will be offered at the next auction on October 16. Tea sold at the Chittagong auction is mostly bought by domestic buyers. Bangladesh’s tax authority in January imposed a 25 percent duty on imports of tea to safeguard the local industry. The south Asian country produces 60 million kg of tea a year against demand of 56 million kg. But tea consumption is rising by 4.5 percent annually, in line with steady economic growth.
Source: brecorder.com/agriculture-a-allied/183/1246865/
