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Eid-ul-Azha primed to flood the country with rawhide
Refayet Ullah Mirdha
Risk looms large of a recurrence of last year’s discarding of rawhides en masse during Eid-ul-Azha in Bangladesh this year for a low injection of funds in the sector and a lack of preparedness of both the government and traders.
In a countermeasure, the government plans to allow export of wet blue or leather that is halfway through processing.
Last year, nearly one crore pieces of rawhide worth Tk 100 crore were thrown away by citizens who sacrificed animals alongside small seasonal traders as they deemed the prices to be too low.
The other factors such as hot and humid weather conditions and the ongoing pandemic will also affect rawhide business during this Eid, scheduled to be celebrated on August 1.
Of the rawhide annually produced in Bangladesh, half comes during Eid-ul-Azha.
Moreover, old stocks of unsold leather, a fall in demand from international retailers and a yet-to-function central effluent treatment plant (CETP) in Savar Tannery Industrial Estate (STIE) will cause severe detrimental effects, said exporters, experts, traders and tanners.
Bangladeshi tanners and exporters have to make do with prices 40 per cent below the international rate as the country’s tanneries do not have a much-needed international certification of Leather Working Group (LWG).
As a result, most of the non-compliant tanneries at the STIE have had to make China their major export destination.
Demand from China also fell drastically because of its trade war with the US, the effects of which also fell on Bangladeshi leather businesses.
Usually, Chinese companies import Bangladeshi leather to process it in their factories and then export to European and American markets.
Experts suggested that the government allow the export of wet blue to create demand at the field level so that citizens can get proper prices.
Usually, seasonal middlemen collect the rawhide at very low prices from ordinary citizens who sacrifice animals and sell those to merchants, who then sell to tanners.
The traditional and seasonal rawhide businesses in Bangladesh are highly monopolised by syndicates of seasonal traders, merchants and tanners. As a result, citizens who sacrifice the animals have been deprived of proper prices for over decades.
“This year, we are fearing more trouble than last year as we did not get any fund from the tanners yet although Eid is knocking at the door,” said Ali Hossain, a former president of the Bangladesh Hide and Skin Merchants Association.
The century-old platform of rawhide traders is based in Dhaka’s Posta, Bangladesh’s biggest trading hub of rawhide that has been treated with salt. The other large hubs are situated in Chattogram, Natore, Palashbari, Tangail, Mymensingh and Jashore.
The merchants have traditionally supplied rawhide to tanners on credit. The tanners pay a significant amount of the arrears ahead of Eid.
The merchants lend money to regionally functioning traders, who provide the same to seasonal traders for the collection of rawhide from citizens around the country.
So the fund has a trickle-down effect, meaning if tanners do not have funds in their hands, the whole business does not take place, which was evidenced last Eid, said Ali Hossain.
Since 1990, merchants are owed as much as Tk 500 crore by the tanners.
Over the years, many small and medium merchants passed away and their businesses collapsed due to mismanagement in this business.
“Many merchants became bank defaulters as the tanners did not pay the arrears,” the third-generation rawhide trader of Posta told The Daily Star.
The number of merchants across the country has also halved over the years as people have been losing interest in this business.
Md Quamrul Islam Rubaiyat
Only a week is left for the upcoming Eid-ul-Azha, but cattle traders in Thakurgaon and Panchagarh are still struggling to get customers for the animals they put up for sale. The photo was taken in Thakurgaon on Wednesday.
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