Tea prices in Bangladesh edged down at the weekly auction on Tuesday on tepid demand from buyers, though tight supplies and strong demand for quality leaf capped the decline. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average price of 235.22 taka ($2.80) per kg at the auction, compared with a revised price of 238.79 taka in the previous sale, National Brokers said. There was tepid demand from buyers, but strong demand for quality leaf helped limit the drop in prices, said a senior official with National Brokers.
The proportion of tea sold, however, dropped despite lower supplies than last week, he added. About 32.4 percent of the 2.29 million kg offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong was unsold, compared with 17.6 percent unsold of the 2.33 million kg offered in the previous auction. Bangladesh's tea production jumped nearly 27 percent in 2016 to a record 85 million kg, helped by favourable weather, making imports a choice not a necessity.
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 in line with economic growth.
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