Tea prices in Bangladesh were barely changed at the weekly auction amid a higher supply than the previous sale, although strong demand for quality leaf capped a steeper price decline. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average of 213.09 taka ($2.6) per kg at the auction, compared with 213.02 taka at the previous sale when prices dropped 2.7 percent. There was muted demand overall but good demand for quality leaf, which helped limit a steep drop in prices when supplies were higher than last week, a senior official at National Brokers said.
Nearly 7.2 percent of the 1.18 million kg offered at the auction centre in Chittagong was unsold. At the previous auction, around 810,500 kg was offered, of which 6.2 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 because of a surge in domestic consumption in line with economic growth.