The likely shortage of sacrificial animals this year would not affect the country’s rawhide collection as there was a sufficient reserve from the last year’s collection, sector people said.
They said Bangladeshi traders still had 40-50% of rawhide collected during last Eid-ul-Azha in their stock due to poor demand and economic slowdown in major destination countries.
Almost 50% of annual rawhide collection takes place during Eid-ul-Azha when a large number of animals are slaughtered by Muslims in Bangladesh as elsewhere in other parts of the world as a sacrifice to Allah.
There has been a fear that the country’s cattle market could see a dearth of supply this year due to the Indian government’s bar on exporting cattle. Bangladesh is largely dependent on the Indian cattle to meet its demand.
“But the shortage of Indian cattle will not be a problem in rawhide collection this year as we have enough stock from last year,” Abu Taher, chairman of Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters Association, told the Dhaka Tribune.
He said about 40-50% rawhide still remained unsold due to slowdown in the global market.
“Prices of leather and leather goods have fallen as demand is poor in the major export destinations. There was also a devaluation of euro which also cast a negative impact on Bangladesh leather sector.”
About 60% of Bangladeshi leather products are exported to the EU countries.
However, the sector people are not willing to set any price of rawhide for this year because there has already been about 20% price fall in the global market.
Meanwhile, the sector people will meet commerce minister to discuss the matter and about setting prices of rawhide.
“We don’t want to fix any price as the global market has remained sluggish,” said Abu Taher.
Md Shaheen Ahmed, president of Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA), expected the crisis would be solved soon as the government started importing cattle from neighbouring Myanmar while India was also easing cattle export barrier.
He said they had set a target to collect 4-5m pieces of rawhide this year.
According to the BTA, Bangladesh slaughtered over 6m cows and 3.5m goats on last Eid-ul-Azha. The association set price of cow rawhide at Tk65-70 per square feet for Dhaka and Tk60-65 for the areas outside Dhaka last year. The goat hide price was set at Tk30-35 per square feet for Dhaka and Tk25-30 for outside Dhaka.
According to the EPB data, in the last fiscal year the export earnings from the leather and leather products marked a meager growth by 0.56% to $1.13bn, which was $1.12bn in the previous year.
The leather export declined by 21.36% to $397.54m, while leather products export rose by 3.78% to $249m in the fiscal. However, the leather footwear posted a robust growth by 27.81% to $484m, which was $378.5m a year ago.
