Tanners to start rawhide purchase from Saturday

Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA) has said tannery owners will start purchasing salted rawhides from traders from Saturday.

Shawkat Ullah, Secretary of BTA said: "From Saturday, we will start buying salted rawhides from dealers and traders at government fixed prices."

BTA aimed at collecting around 80 lakh salted rawhides this year.

The government fixed prices of salted rawhides of cows and buffaloes at Tk 35-40 per square ft in Dhaka and Tk 28-32 per square ft in rest of the country.

The prices of goatskin were fixed at Tk 13 and Tk 15 per square ft which is 27 percent less than that of last year.

The prices were fixed by the government following discussion with merchants, tanners, and tariff commission.

Commerce ministry said, the government lowered rawhide prices this year by 30 percent to create a win-win situation for buyers and sellers.

In many places, traders failed to find any buyers to sell rawhides due to lack of coordinated effort from the government in this regard. Many traders dumped their rawhide to the rivers and ditches after failing to get fair prices.

Shawkat Ullah blamed seasonal traders blamed seasonal traders for for the wasteg of rawhides.

"We used to trade with the dealers round the year and they know the market. Rawhide prices have been fixed only for seasonal traders. Their handling of rawhide is very unprofessional as they don't know how to salt skin," he said.

"Traders sometime bring substandard and defective rawhide day after Eid. Who will buy these hides?" he questioned.