Tea prices in Bangladesh rose for a third straight week on Tuesday at a weekly auction on strong demand from buyers in spite of higher volumes on offer, brokers said. The average price of Bangladeshi tea was 215.05 taka ($2.6) a kg against 202.77 taka per kg at the previous sale, an official at National Brokers Limited said, the country's largest tea broking firm.
Around 975,750 kg of tea was offered at Bangladesh's sole auction centre in Chittagong, and just 0.89 percent was left unsold. That compared with 0.45 percent unsold in the previous auction, when the offer was nearly 806,000 kg of tea. "There was a very strong demand at progressively higher rates," the broking firm said in its report. Different grades were sold between 200 taka and 259 taka per kg at the auction, up from previous sale's range from 185 taka to 255 taka. The next auction will be held on June 12, with around 1 million kg on offer.
There was huge demand for good-quality tea throughout the 2011-12 year, with the average price rising to around 130 taka from 104 taka a year earlier, brokers said. Tea offered at the Chittagong auction is mostly picked up by domestic buyers. Bangladesh's tax authority in January imposed a 25 percent duty on imports of tea to safeguard the local industry.