Bangladesh tea prices fall on inferior quality leaf

DHAKA (Reuters) - Tea prices in Bangladesh fell at a weekly auction, dragged down by poor quality leaf, although the total volume offered for sale this week was lower than at the previous auction. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average price of 184.12 taka ($2.80) per kg at the auction held on Tuesday, compared with a revised price of 187.13 taka in the previous sale, National Brokers said.

Buyers showed little interest in the end-of-season leaf that usually tends to be of inferior quality, at the penultimate auction of the current marketing season, said a senior executive at National Brokers.

 About 1.5% of the 1.19 million kg offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong was unsold, compared with 11% unsold of the 2.09 million kg offered at the previous auction.

Bangladesh’s tea production jumped nearly 27% in 2016 to a record 85 million kg, helped by favourable weather, making imports a choice rather than a necessity.

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.