Ctg rawhide traders eye Dhaka buyers

Ctg rawhide traders eye Dhaka buyers

Rawhide traders of Chittagong could not do any business until yesterday as no buyers arrived from Dhaka. This year, around 350 to 400 traders have processed about 400,000 rawhides at 200 warehouses in the port city. As the government recently closed all tanneries in Chittagong, local businessmen have to depend on buyers from Dhaka. Chittagong’s seasonal rawhide traders suffered huge losses this Eid-ul-Azha as they bought the hides for much higher prices than the ones prescribed by the Bangladesh Tanners’ Association (BTA) and had to sell them at much lower prices. Some seasonal businessmen even processed rawhides all by themselves to get better prices.
When contacted, Abdul Kader, vice-president of the Chittagong Rawhide Warehouse Traders’ Cooperative Association Ltd (CRWTCAL), told The Independent: “No buyer has come to Chittagong to buy rawhides yet. I hope they will start to come sooner than later. The price of the total amount of rawhides amounts to more than Tk. 50-60 crore.” He said the cost of per square feet of salt rawhide this year would be Tk. 60-62 due to the high price of salt. Some warehouse traders bought per square feet of rawhide at Tk. 45-Tk. 50 from seasonal traders, according to sources. The sources said that warehouse traders bought each rawhide between Tk. 500 to Tk. 1,200. They also claimed that no rawhide was smuggled this year. They further claimed that rawhides were processed at different warehouses in areas Cox’s Bazar, Rangamati, Bandarban, Khargachari, Kaptai, Mirsarai Raster Matha and Nazir Hat—all close to Chittagong.

“The tanneries of Chittagong usually collect 70 per cent of rawhides from the local market in cash. The rest comes from Dhaka. Since the government recently closed the last two tanneries in Chittagong, the traders have to depend solely on buyers from Dhaka,” said Sekandar Mia, president of the Chittagong Rawhide Warehouse Traders’ Cooperative Association Ltd (CRWTCAL). He also alleged that tannery owners created a syndicate during Eid, which did not want to give a good price for rawhides. He said they had sold per square feet of rawhides between for Tk. 75-80 last year. “This year’s price is fixed at half of last year’s price, but the processing cost has doubled. The price of salt has also increased three-fold,” said Sekandar Mia.

He also said a sack of salt (74kg), which was bought for Tk. 400–450 last year, now costs Tk. 1,400–1,600 this year. Usually, the processing cost of a rawhide is Tk.150–200, but this year it was over Tk 300–350 due to the high price of salt, he added. On September 8, after a meeting with commerce minister Tofail Ahmed, the Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters’ Association, the BTA and the Bangladesh Hides and Skin Merchants’ Association fixed the price of unprocessed rawhides at Tk. 50 per square feet for Dhaka and Tk. 40 for the rest of the country during Eid-ul-Azha.