Tea prices in Bangladesh rose at the weekly auction for the third time in a row, due to strong demand for quality leaf amid tight supplies. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average of 229.59 taka ($2.7) per kg at the auction centre in the port city of Chittagong on Tuesday, compared with 223.71 taka at the previous sale.
There was strong demand for quality tea and buyers were ready to pay premiums that aided the rise in prices, an official at National Brokers said. Almost the entire quantity was sold as the volume offered was lower than last week, the official added. Only 1 percent of the 1.13 million kg offered in the auction was left unsold. At the previous auction, around 1.27 million kg was offered, of which 1.8 percent went unsold.
Bangladesh's tea production dropped to nearly 79 million kg in 2017 from a record 85 million kg the previous year, which officials attributed to excessive rainfall. The South Asian country was the world's fifth-largest tea exporter in the 1990s, but is now a net importer as the surge in domestic consumption is in line with economic growth.
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