Leather price up 13%, salt 63% ahead of Eid

The cost of unpackaged tanning salt, which is used in the leather industry, has increased across the country by 63 per cent and the price of salt-applied rawhide by 13 per cent in the run-up to Eid-ul-Azha.

According to Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Corporation (BSCIC), the country produced enough salt in the last financial year.

Still, suppliers say there is less on the market than there is demand for it.

They claimed that mill owners syndicated and increased the price.

Farmers have also raised the price of raw salt and the syndicate, citing a rise in labour and other costs in salt production.

Refined coarse-grained tanning salt went for Tk 560 per sack (75 kg) or Tk 7.8 per kg at the wholesale market in Cox’s Bazar in August last year, say traders.

Currently, the same quality salt costs Tk 930 per sack or Tk 12.5 per kilogram, an increase of 63 per cent from the previous price.

Traders also said that the price of salt had gone up to Tk 1,000 per bag in early June. The supply of salt, which is mainly used to process sacrificial animal skins, begins in June.

Tipu Sultan, general secretary of the Bangladesh Hide and Skin Merchants Association, said, “Salt prices are not falling. I bought a bag of salt from Narayanganj a week ago for Tk 1,010. Now it is being sold at Tk 1,100. At this time last year, the price of salt was Tk 750 a sack.”

Mubarak Hossain, a salt wholesaler and owner of MH Enterprise, told The Business Post that salt prices have increased abnormally. “There could be several reasons. One of them is that the mill owners have reduced the supply of salt by syndicating. Besides, salt was not produced as per the demand this time. The cost of salt production has also increased.”

However, mill owners say that salt production in the country is less than demand.

So the price has gone up at the normal pace of the market. BSCIC has already approved the import of 1.5 lakh tonnes of salt to meet the deficit.

Meanwhile, the government fixed the price of salt-applied rawhide of cows at Tk 47-52 per square foot in Dhaka and Tk40-44 across the country ahead of the holy Eid-ul-Azha.

The price of rawhide of cows has been increased by Tk7 and goat hide by Tk3 per square foot compared to the prices of the previous year.

Last year, the price of rawhide of sacrificial cows was Tk40-Tk45 per square foot in Dhaka and Tk33-Tk 37 outside the capital.

However, the price of goat hide has been fixed at Tk18-Tk 20 per square foot while the price of hide of She-goat at Tk12-Tk 14 per square foot across the country including Dhaka.

The price of goat hide last year was set at Tk15-17 per square foot, while it was Tk12-14 per square foot of female goat hide across the country.