Tea prices in Bangladesh rose at the weekly auction for the sixth time in a row due to robust demand for quality leaf, despite there being a higher volume on offer. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average price of 229.62 taka ($2.79) per kg at the auction on Tuesday, compared with 225.59 taka at the previous sale, the National Brokers said. There was strong demand and buyers were ready to pay premiums while supplies were higher than in the last sale, it said.
About 12.8 percent of the 2.78 million kg offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong remained unsold. In the previous auction 9.7 percent of the 2.58 million kg on offer was unsold. Bangladesh's tea production rose nearly 27 percent last year to a record 85 million kg, a harvest that was seen as big enough to make imports unnecessary. 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.