Tea prices snap seven weeks of falls

Tea prices rose at the weekly auction held at Chittagong Tuesday, snapping a seven-week run of falls, due to strong demand from local buyers for quality leaf, reports Reuters.

Bangladeshi tea fetched an average Tk 185.81 per kg at the 18th auction of the current marketing season, slightly up from 185.62 taka at the previous week's sale, an executive with National Brokers said.

There was robust demand for quality tea while volume dropped from last week when the offering was the largest of the currentseason, the executive said.

About 2.17 million kg were offered at the sole auction centre in Chittagong, of which 10 percent was unsold. In the previous auction, about 12 percent of the 2.19 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 5.0 per cent 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.

The country, however, has moved from being a net exporter to a net importer of tea due to rising consumption.