Tea prices in Bangladesh fell for a second straight session at the weekly auction on Tuesday due to larger supplies of inferior quality, although robust demand for quality leaf capped the slide. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average 189.18 taka ($2.44) per kg at the twenty-fifth auction of the current marketing season, down from 189.41 taka at the previous week's sale, an executive with National Brokers said.
There was strong demand for quality tea that limited the fall in prices, the executive said. About 2.04 million kg were offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong, of which nearly 14 percent was unsold. In the previous auction, about 20 percent of the 2.31 million kg offered went unsold. The national budget for the 2015/16 fiscal year that started in July raised the regulatory duty on tea imports by 5 percent to discourage overseas buying. Tea prices fell sharply in the last marketing season on poor demand from local buyers, as business sentiment was hit by renewed political unrest early this year that left more than 120 people dead and disrupted supplies.