[🇧🇩] Tea Industry of Bangladesh

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Irregular rainfall cuts 2025 tea output in major hubs

Irregular rainfall affected tea production in major tea-growing regions of Sylhet and Chattogram in 2025, although the country’s overall output slightly increased compared with the previous year.

www.newagebd.net

Irregular rainfall cuts 2025 tea output in major hubs
Sadiqur Rahman 14 March, 2026, 01:48

Irregular rainfall affected tea production in major tea-growing regions of Sylhet and Chattogram in 2025, although the country’s overall output slightly increased compared with the previous year.

According to Bangladesh Tea Board data, the country produced 9,49,26,647 kilograms of tea in 2025, up from 9,30,42,001 kilograms in 2024.

However, production declined in key tea-producing districts, Moulvibazar, Sylhet and Chattogram, mainly due to irregular rainfall patterns in 2025.

Moulvibazar, the largest tea-producing district, produced 4,48,45,009 kilograms of tea in 2025, down from 4,63,33,372 kilograms in 2024.

Tea production in Chattogram fell to 1,04,30,631 kilograms in 2025 from 1,12,80,572 kilograms a year earlier.

Sylhet district produced 42,45,685 kilograms in 2025, down from 45,33,326 kilograms in 2024.

Experts told New Age on Friday that irregular rainfall in major tea-growing areas had affected leaf growth and reduced the plucking period.

There are 171 tea gardens in Bangladesh. Of them, 90 are located in Moulvibazar, 25 in Habiganj, 22 in Chattogram, 19 in Sylhet, 10 in Panchagarh, two in Rangamati and one in Thakurgaon.

Bangladesh Tea Board deputy director Suman Sikder said the 2025 tea season began with drought in several tea valleys, followed by irregular rainfall.

‘Perhaps it rained in one valley, but drought persisted in neighbouring valleys, such was the situation last year,’ he said.

Data from the Bangladesh Meteorological Department show that Chattogram received 99 per cent less than the normal rainfall of 23 millimetres in February 2025.

Sylhet received 90 per cent less than the normal rainfall of 34 millimetres in that month.

In May, however, the two regions experienced excessive rainfall, 49.9 per cent above normal rainfall of 338 millimetres in Chattogram and 127.3 per cent above normal rainfall of 528 millimetres in Sylhet.

In July 2025, Chattogram recorded 22.3 per cent more rainfall than the normal rainfall of 692 millimetres, while Sylhet received 7.9 per cent less than the normal rainfall of 536 millimetres.

In October, rainfall in Chattogram was 39.4 per cent less than the normal rainfall of 216 millimetres, while Sylhet recorded 13.5 per cent less than the normal rainfall of 182 millimetres.

Professor Iftekhar Ahmad of the Department of Food Engineering and Tea Technology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology said that drought, irregular rainfall and rising temperatures negatively affected tea production in the Sylhet and Chattogram regions.

‘Due to insufficient and untimely rainfall, tea leaf growth declined in many gardens, disrupting the plucking season,’ he said.

He said that changes in the timing of the monsoon shortened the plucking period in the Sylhet region, reducing overall output.

In the Chattogram region, irregular rainfall, both in timing and volume, reduced leaf flush, which ultimately lowered tea production, he added.

Iftekhar also identified climate change, regional weather variation, water scarcity and irrigation problems as key factors behind the decline.

Bangladesh Tea Association chairman Kamran T Rahman said that tea gardens in the Sylhet and Chattogram regions needed additional irrigation facilities with groundwater, as irregular rainfall was not sufficient for irrigation.

‘Alternative groundwater-based irrigation systems should be developed to tackle drought-like conditions and we need government support for this,’ he said, urging government support.​

 

[Saif]

Tea Workers Day: Over a century since Mulluke Cholo, how much has changed for tea workers?

Every year on May 20, tea workers across Bangladesh observe Cha Shramik Dibosh: Tea Workers Day.

www.thedailystar.net

Tea Workers Day: Over a century since Mulluke Cholo, how much has changed for tea workers?

Mintu Deshwara

‘Tea is not merely a beverage in today’s Bangladesh—it is part of our culture, a foreign-exchange earner, and a source of national pride.’ PHOTO: MINTU DESHWARA

On the morning of May 20, 1921, approximately 30,000 tea workers left everything behind. Chanting Mulluke Cholo—”Let’s go to our homeland”—they left the tea gardens of Sylhet and began walking towards Meghna ghat in Chandpur, hoping to return to Bihar, Odisha, Assam, and the other lands from which they had been brought under false promises of a better life. They never made it. At the ghat, the British colonial police opened fire. Bodies fell and were thrown into the river. The survivors fled, or were captured and tortured. The rest, with nowhere else to go, returned to the gardens.

In his book, Plantation Labour in India (1931), Rajanikanta Das wrote that “kicking, punching, and various forms of physical torture by European officers against coolies frequently created situations of conflict in the tea gardens. In 1891 alone, 106 incidents of riots and clashes took place in the tea plantations of Assam.” Such resistance continued for years and eventually exploded into the major movement of 1921. Tea workers wanted to return to their homelands, and the spark spread across plantations in the two valleys. One of the immediate causes behind the uprising was the reduction of workers’ wages.

In Coolie: The Story of Labour and Capital in India (1932), Dewan Chaman Lal wrote that during the First World War, tea plantation owners made enormous profits, as high as 450 percent in some cases. Despite these huge returns, workers’ wages were not increased even by a single anna. However, when the post-war economic downturn began, wages were reduced to only three paisa per day. Even when workers earned three annas, it was not enough to support a family. In addition, men, women, and children alike were subjected to whipping and inhumane torture by plantation owners. As a result, many workers decided they wanted to return to their native lands.

But the tea garden owners were unwilling to let them leave and therefore intensified repression.

In his book History of the Labour Movement in India (1830-2010), Sukomal Sen described the Mulluke Cholo movement in detail. He wrote that European railway officials in Karimganj, Assam had ordered that no train tickets be sold to the labourers. As a result, many workers began walking towards their homeland on foot. Later, due to the intervention of Kolkata Mayor Jatindra Mohan Sengupta, ticket sales resumed.

The workers from Assam travelled through Sylhet towards the Meghna river port in Chandpur. Along the way, tea workers from various plantations in Sylhet joined them. Their plan was to board steamers from the Meghna ghat to Goalanda and then continue by train to their respective birthplaces. However, on May 20, the workers eager to return home faced a horrific tragedy.

As they marched towards Chandpur, under the rallying cry of Mulluke Cholo, Gurkha soldiers stationed by the colonial authorities fell upon them without mercy. Many were killed; for countless others, the dream of returning home died at that ghat. Trapped, they were absorbed permanently into the tea gardens of this region as bound labourers.

That blood-soaked day has since become a symbol of broken dreams and defiant resistance—and it is why, every year on May 20, tea workers across Bangladesh observe Cha Shramik Dibosh: Tea Workers Day.

More than a hundred years have now passed. The British are gone, as are the Pakistanis. Bangladesh is a sovereign nation with a booming tea industry—166 tea garden estates, over 116,762 registered workers (and thousands more casual workers). Yet, the state has never officially recognised May 20 as Tea Workers Day.

Tea is not merely a beverage in today’s Bangladesh—it is part of our culture, a foreign-exchange earner, and a source of national pride. And this institution was built, brick by brick, leaf by leaf, on the labour of men and women whose ancestors were brought here as indentured workers, stripped of their freedom and dignity, forced to clear jungles, plant seedlings, and build the bungalows inside which their overseers lived in comfort. Their descendants continue that labour today, earning Tk 187 a day and receiving some aid (including grain rations and primary healthcare), crowded into cramped quarters in “labour lines,” often without healthcare or educational opportunities. Official recognition of May 20 as Tea Workers Day would cost the government nothing, but it would mean everything to a community that has spent a century being told that their history does not matter.

The tea garden communities are home to dozens of distinct ethnic groups, each with their own language, songs, rituals, and memories. Researchers have identified 14 of the country’s small ethnic languages as endangered, and several of these are spoken by those living in the tea gardens. Children grow up learning Bangla at school, but there are no curricular provisions to keep their mother tongues alive. Kharia, Sadri, Mundari, Kurukh, Oraon—these languages hold centuries of history. As they fade, an irreplaceable part of Bangladesh’s cultural mosaic disappears with them. However, this is not inevitable.

Other countries have created frameworks for preserving Indigenous languages and cultures even within majority-language educational systems. Bangladesh has institutions—the International Mother Language Institute, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, the Ministry of Education, etc—to do the same. What is absent is political will.

Recognising Tea Workers Day will only be the beginning. The government and the tea industry should also take concrete steps to improve the lives of workers, including a revision of the daily wage in a way that reflects the actual cost of living; legal recognition of land rights for workers and their families who have lived for generations in the labour lines; allocation of educational resources that give the children of tea workers a genuine path forward; and protection of the cultural and linguistic heritage of tea garden communities under the remit of the International Mother Language Institute.

These are not radical demands, but rather the basic obligations of a just society towards people who have added, and continue to add, to this nation’s culture and economy.

Mintu Deshwara is a journalist at The Daily Star.​

 

[Saif]

The Financial Express | First Financial Daily of Bangladesh

Get latest stock share market news, financial news, economy news, politics news, breaking news, Bangladesh economy news at The Financial Express.

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Tea sector needs a fresh look

SYED FATTAHUL ALIM

Published :
Jun 22, 2026 00:28
Updated :
Jun 22, 2026 00:28

The tea sector contributes approximately 0.81 per cent to 1.0 per cent to Bangladesh's national GDP. It is the country's second-largest export-oriented cash crop after jute and supporting millions of livelihoods, especially in rural communities. The sector provides direct and indirect employment for roughly 3.0 million people, primarily in the tea estates of Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Habiganj and in Chattogram division's tea estates mostly located in the Fatkchhari upazila. There are some tea gardens also in Rangunia, Banshkhali and Rangamati. Add to these the small-grower networks of Panchagar in the northern district of Thakurgaon. As a vital domestic cash crop, it is a primary driver of socioeconomic stability in rural regions.

Tea output in 2026 reached 94.91 million kg, a 2.01per cent increase over the previous year. Basically an agricultural crop, historically the tea sector has been considered an industry. But tea's production, like any other agricultural crop, is highly dependent on weather condition. Usually, its production begins to rise from May, and in July the yield increases to around 10 million to 15 million kg. However, with the decline in rainfall from November, the yield begins to fall. Since, tea harvesting remains suspended in February for maintaining and tending of the tea gardens, the yield is naturally the lowest in this month of the year.

A rapidly expanding middle class and rising urbanisation have driven annual domestic consumption of tea to roughly 85 to 90 million kg. Despite a slight increase in production, the sector faces headwinds such as rising fuel, fertiliser, and labour costs. Industry analysts point to the need for better irrigation, modernised land management and a shift towards value-added premium teas to improve global competitiveness and profitability. But this important sector of the economy is also plagued by some inherent issues that need to be addressed before it can make its mark in the international market. In fact, tea is a vital driver for economies across South Asia including Bangladesh and India. But it is burdened by systemic hurdles that suppress productivity and profitability. The sector's stability requires addressing the core bottlenecks and their solutions.

These include unpredictable rainfall and seasonal droughts which stunt leaf growth and significantly slash yields. Over 50 per cent of tea bushes are aging and underproductive. Combined with old processing machinery, this hurts the final product's quality. The costs of inputs including fertilisers, pesticides and labour have skyrocketed, while tea is still heavily taxed or subjected to commercial interest rates (10-14 per cent) rather than agricultural rates. Stagnant wages, housing challenges and outdated headcount ratios hamper worker motivation and productivity. Rigid weekly floor-priced auctions (such as in Chattogram) restrict direct export negotiations and depress local prices. Most tea is exported in bulk. Without strong, centralised branding (like Sri Lanka's 'Ceylon Tea' or India's 'Darjeeling Tea'), the industry misses out on premium global revenues. If tea is reclassified from a commercial industry to agriculture, it will enable garden owners to access 4.0-6.0 per cent subsidised agricultural credit for modernisation. While the industry contributes significantly to the economy, it faces other challenges. Because local demand outpaces supply, tea exports have generally declined over the past three decades to prioritise the domestic market. Despite the overall drop in exports, established brands continue to compete internationally. Leading companies like SEYLON, Finlay, and Ispahani dominate the market, with SEYLON maintaining its position as the country's top branded tea exporter. The good news is that tea cultivation has expanded beyond the traditional hills of Sylhet and Chattogram. The transformation of flatlands in northern districts, such as Panchagarh and Thakurgaon, has been highly successful, now contributing over 10 per cent of total national production. With per capita consumption rising, the local tea market is expected to continue growing at an annual rate of over 8.0 per cent. This provides a massive, reliable revenue stream for local producers. Further utilisation of unused or fallow flatlands for tea production remains the most viable way to meet the escalating demand. The government and the Bangladesh Tea Board are encouraging smallholder farming in these regions.

To revive exports, the industry must focus on producing premium/specialty blends that satisfy international standards, such as Maximum Residue Level (MRL) compliance for European markets. Against this backdrop, the government is now pushing for global competitiveness, sustainable production and digital supply chain management. So, it can be said that the tea sector is undergoing a strategic renaissance. With domestic consumption absorbing almost the entirety of the Tk22.26 billion crop, major investment avenues lie in premium export development, cold-chain logistics and modern plantation automation. The Bangladesh Tea Board (BTB) is actively urging growers to diversify into aromatic, oolong and specialty blends for the international market. Brands like Seylon and Finlay continue to dominate the export space, but there is high-yield potential in smallholder investments in northern districts. Investors are increasingly looking to develop eco-tourism and luxury lodging near major tea estates, specifically in Moulvibazar and Habiganj (which account for roughly 77 per cent of national production). As a result of reforms in BEPZA, attractive packages are being offered for foreign investors within Export Processing Zones (EPZs), including tax holidays and 100 per cent foreign ownership permissible. The government has advanced plans to amend the Customs Act to establish free trade zones and to lift the 49 per cent foreign shareholding cap in private Inland Container Depots (ICDs) to attract international-standard logistics players. Auctions-which occur at Agrabad in Chattogram and Srimangal-are increasingly digitised, speeding up trade cycles.

The Commerce Ministry has formed task teams to chart the future of the tea supply chain. Meanwhile, estates are modernising their distribution, with major firms like bKash facilitating digital payrolls for estate workers, creating a more reliable labour supply chain. There is no question that the tea sector has its immense growth potential seeing that at least its domestic consumption is continuously on the rise, thanks to increasing population, particularly of the middle class. But what about the tea garden workers, who are among the most unfairly treated segments of the working class in the country? Regrettably though, some 360,000 tea garden workers of the country face multidimensional deprivations, generational poverty and hazardous working conditions. Despite the historic nature of their work-primarily in regions like Sylhet and Moulvibazar-systemic underpayment, lack of land rights and poor access to healthcare and education keep these communities in substandard living arrangements. Daily wages, for instance, remain exceptionally low, forcing workers to rely on micro-debt leading to child labour, not to mention, chronic malnutrition. Workers often put in long hours in extreme weather without adequate protective gear. Many face strict daily plucking quotas (e.g., upwards of 25 kg). Research by organisations like the Bangladesh Institute of Labour Studies show that a vast majority of workers lack formal appointment cards or service books which hinder their job security. Families are frequently confined to cramped, dilapidated estate housing with limited access to safe drinking water and sanitation. In the circumstances, alongside formulating the growth strategy of the tea sector, the condition of its workers, the prime mover of its growth, needs improvement. They are, as though, still bound in chains, which harks back to the colonial era. That should come to an end, if only to ensure an inclusive growth of the tea sector.​

 

[Saif]

9th Government Investment Sukuk worth Tk 56 billion up for auction Monday

Bangladesh Bank is set to conduct an auction for the 9th Bangladesh Government Investment Sukuk, titled “CAFDRIRP Socio-Economic Development Sukuk”, on Monday, June 22, 2026. The auction will be managed by the Islamic Securities Section under the Debt Management Department of the centr

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Tea imports hit decade-low level

FE REPORT

Published :
Jun 21, 2026 13:11
Updated :
Jun 21, 2026 13:11

A worker inside a tea factory — Representational photo (Collected)

Bangladesh's tea imports fell to a decade low of just 50,000 kilogrammes (kg) in 2025 as growing domestic production increasingly met local demand, while exports continued their recovery, according to data presented at the 6th National Tea Day celebration in Sreemangal on Saturday.

Industry statistics show tea imports have declined sharply from 8.83 million kg in 2016 to only 0.05 million kg in 2025.

At the same time, tea exports have staged a notable recovery over the past five years, rising to 1.64 million kg in 2025 from 0.68 million kg in 2021.

Top tea gardens, organisations and individuals received awards in recognition of their contributions to production, quality improvement, exports, marketing innovation and workers' welfare during the National Tea Day programme in Sreemangal.

According to data from the Bangladesh Tea Board, national tea production reached 94.63 million kg in 2025, up from 85.05 million kg in 2016.

The country's average tea yield per acre also improved over the decade, increasing from 643 kg in 2016 to 829 kg in 2024, reflecting higher productivity despite periodic weather-related fluctuations.

Speaking at the programme, lawmaker Md Mujibur Rahman Chowdhury said tea is closely linked to Bangladesh's history, economy and the livelihoods of millions of people.

"Tea is not merely a beverage; it is an important economic sector. We must move forward with renewed commitment to make the industry more modern, sustainable and internationally competitive," he said.

He noted that more than 160 tea gardens and thousands of small-scale tea growers are making significant contributions to the national economy, while Bangladeshi tea is increasingly finding its place in international markets.

The lawmaker stressed the importance of ensuring fair wages, better housing, education, healthcare and social security for tea workers, and called for integrated planning to support both industry growth and workers' welfare.

Commerce Secretary Md Ataur Rahman Khan said the government remains committed to the sustainable development of the tea sector and to improving the living standards of tea workers.

Bangladesh Tea Board Chairman Md Mesbah Uddin Ahmed said all licensing and operational services of the Tea Board have now been digitised.

He also highlighted the role of improved tea varieties developed by the Bangladesh Tea Research Institute in increasing production and supporting the development of value-added tea products aimed at expanding exports.

Among the award recipients, Mirzapur Tea Garden was named Best Tea Garden in recognition of its outstanding contribution to workers' welfare.

In the worker category, Ms Jasmin Orao of Nepucha Tea Garden received the award for Best Tea Leaf Plucker.

As a special recognition marking the occasion, Sristi Tea Limited, located in the Jagdal area of Panchagarh Sadar Upazila, was selected as the Best Bought Leaf Tea Factory.

Md Moyezur Rahman of Atwari Upazila in Panchagarh was named Best Small-Scale Tea Producer.​