Tanners started purchasing salt added rawhides from the traders at the government fixed rate on Saturday which will continue for two months.
According to Bangladesh Tanner's Association (BTA), tanners will continue purchasing hides from wholesalers for two months and offer fair prices for the rawhides preserved properly.
However, the rawhide wholesalers of the capital said that they will not sell hide unless the tanners pay their previous year’s dues.
Bangladesh Hide and Skin Marchant Association (BHSMA) president Delwar Hossain at a press briefing on Saturday said about the decision.
“Wholesalers have Taka 400 crore dues to the tanners. We will not sale hides unless the tanners pay the dues. Further decision will be announced on Sunday (today) after a meeting with the Commerce Ministry,” he said.
The commerce ministry will hold a meeting with tanners, traders and others concerned today (Sunday). They will discuss the ongoing situation in the tanner industry and later inform their decision to media.
It is to be noted that the price of rawhide during the recently concluded Eid-ul-Adha was extremely low, what the traders said, lowest in the last three decades. Seasonal traders alleged that a syndicate is responsible for such a dismal situation in tannery sector.
This has badly affected the seasonal traders, as well as the Madrasas and Lillah Boardings (religious educational institutes for orphan and poor children), which largely depend on earnings from donated rawhides.
As the seasonal traders could not sell the rawhide even at a price much lower than their buying price, they left abundant of them on roadside and under the open sky while some of them buried or dump those into river.
About the allegations of syndication, both tanners and traders are pointing finger to one another. To settle the matter, the commerce ministry has called a meeting with the stakeholders of tanner industry at the ministry today.
Earlier, to ensure fair price of the country’s rawhide, the ministry on the second day of Eid, took decision to export rawhide from the country.
Commerce secretary Md Mofizul Islam said, “Our decision of exporting rawhide is final. We want to develop our export industries, and so we will allow exporting rawhide and wet blue leather first. And then based on situation, we will export salt-added rawhide”.
If the tanners start collecting rawhide as per the government fixed price and the situation becomes normal, only than the ministry could change its decision of exporting rawhide, he added.
It is to be noted, the government had set the price of cowhide at Tk 45 to 50 a square foot in Dhaka and Tk 35 to 40 a square foot for outside Dhaka while the prices of castrated-goat skin had been set at Tk 18 to 20 a square foot and that of goatskin at Tk 13 to 15 a square foot across the country.
