Lower prices for rawhide this Eid
Apprehending a recurrence of keep going year's discarding of rawhides sobre masse during Eid-ul-Azha, the federal government this year lowered its charges for the upcoming event and allowed its export to rejuvenate the local market.
Commerce Minister Tipu Munshi announced the costs at a virtual assembly organised by the commerce ministry yesterday.
The price of cattle rawhide treated with salt has been set between Tk 35 to Tk 40 per square feet when being traded within Dhaka, which is 29 % lower than that this past year, he said.
Outside of Dhaka, the purchase price will range between Tk 28 and Tk 32, which is 20 % less year-on-year.
Similarly, it is Tk 13 to Tk 15 for the processed skins of male goats (straight down 27 %) and Tk 10 to Tk 12 for that of female goats (straight down 23 per cent).
The federal government, if necessary, will allow the export of rawhide alongside household leather, which has gone halfway through processing to ensure that citizens who sacrifice animals and tiny traders can get proper prices on the hides during upcoming Eid-ul-Azha, said Munshi.
"Allowing export of rawhide and wet blue (the partially processed household leather) is our previous weapon. We allows rawhide export to ensure that people and small traders will get the proper prices," he added.
Last year, nearly one crore bits of rawhide worth Tk 100 crore were thrown away by citizens alongside tiny seasonal traders.
Rawhide merchants in the united states blamed a portion of tanners for creating the awkward problem citing their "irresponsible" organization practices since 1990.
Merchants have got traditionally supplied rawhide to tanners on credit rating. The tanners pay a significant volume of the arrears ahead of Eid.
The merchants lend this funds to regionally working traders, who supply the same to seasonal traders for the assortment of rawhide from citizens through the Eid when about 50 % of the rawhide that Bangladesh makes annually is generated.
Hence, this seasonal business runs on a good trickle-down effect.
Even so, the arrears have become since 1990, coming to stand at some Tk 500 crore at the moment. The situation last year switched worse as tanners paid back about 40 % of their arrears, while usually, they do about 70 %.
This created a dearth of cash available in the market alongside resentment among the merchants, leading to the discarding of rawhides.
By taking down the prices this year, the federal government hopes to get tanners to inject considerably more funds in to the market to have the demand choosing the sale of rawhides instead of those being discarded.
Regarding your choice for enabling the export of rawhide, the federal government possessed banned it to begin with seeking to retain it for benefit addition in the country's source chain of set and leather goods.
Since only tanners can handle processing the merchandise, the ban remaining the normal citizens and small traders with no choice but to provide directly into minimal prices made available from tanners nearly every year.
This vicious cycle of unpaid arrears and minimal prices in rawhide trade has been on repeat over the past three decades.
It has come to trap many victims, including poor students of orphanages, mostly madrasas, where ordinary persons tend to donate the amount of money gained through the sale of hides of their sacrificial animals.
With arrears lingering for so very long, some 95 % of the merchants have either gone bankrupt, shuttered businesses or just passed away.
"Alternatively, the tanners have already been awarded industrial land in Savar Tannery Industrial Estate in subsidised prices with a large number of crores of taka spent by the federal government," said a good senior leader of the Bangladesh Rawhide and Skin Merchant Association asking never to be named.
Still, the tanners aren't paying the arrears to the tiny merchants, he said.
At yesterday's assembly, the minister also mentioned that the tanners should pay the arrears to the merchants to ensure that they can run their businesses.
The minister said some teams have already been formed from the most notable degree of the commerce ministry compared to that at the union level, including four that would be active in Dhaka, to monitor the problem this Eid.
The existing international prices of leather and leather goods, the pandemic and the quality of rawhides have been taken into consideration for fixing the prices, he said.
Tanners, leather and natural leather goods exporters, federal government higher-ups, salt traders and rawhide merchants took component in the assembly moderated by Commerce Secretary Md Jafar Uddin.
Md Shaheen Ahmed, president of the Bangladesh Tanners Association, hoped that the dumping incident wouldn't normally recur.
Like other folks, he suggested applying five to eight kilograms of salt on a rawhide to preserve the product quality so that it could be sold even after a month, a hold-up that could permit the prices to go up.
Saiful Islam, president of the Leathergoods and Footwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association of Bangladesh, suggested that regardless if the federal government allows rawhide exports, it should be for a brief period.
If the rawhide export is allowed for an extended period, the local leather goods makers will face a crisis, he added.
Siddiqur Rahman, vice-president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Sector, and Facts Secretary Kamrun Nahar as well spoke.
