The Bangladesh Tea Board (BTB) has urgently sought 27,607 tonnes of various types of fertiliser at subsidised rates to continue production at tea gardens.
Officials say it is required to supply fertilisers to tea gardens at right time. Otherwise, production may be hampered.
Besides, the board said it might require the import of tea on a large scale to meet the local demand.
To the end, it has recently written to commerce ministry with a plea for necessary allocation of fertilisers from agriculture ministry.
According to the officials, the board earlier sent a letter to the commerce ministry for the same.
Some 120 tea gardens have placed demand letters for fertiliser at subsidised rates for fiscal year 2021-22.
The BTB had written to as many as 167 tea gardens for sending the letters for fertilizer.
Bangladesh saw a significant rise in tea production in 2019 and 2020 for the supply of adequate fertilisers at right time by agriculture ministry.
The board hopes a record amount of tea will be produced in the country this year too.
Tea production will reduce drastically if the required fertilisers are not used in tea gardens at right time.
Simultaneously, an extension of tea cultivation and replanting activities will also get hurt only to create a negative impact on the tea industry, it says.
The tea sector is a prioritised industrial segment under the National Industrial Policy-2016.
Bangladesh produced an estimated 86.39-million kilograms of tea in 2020, of which 84.22-million kilos were consumed locally.
In the first quarter of this fiscal year, it grew 39.31-million kilos of tea, a rise of 43.48 per cent over the same period of the last fiscal.
The volume of local consumption will stand at an estimated 105.46-million kilos and 111-million kilos in 2021 and 2022 respectively, according to the board.
The government has set a target to increase tea production to 140-million kg by 2025, aiming to meet the country's growing demand and increase its exports.
The country's lost tradition of tea export will be restored through exporting an additional 10.57-million kilos of tea, according to commerce ministry.
The volume of export was 2.17-million kilos in 2020.
The domestic demand for tea is rising rapidly due to urbanisation and a change in consumer taste along with the growth of population.
Market diversification is necessary to increase tea production and its contribution to the national export earnings, according to a Bangladesh Bank review.
The primary importers of tea from Bangladesh were the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Japan and China in January-March 2019.
Once a tea exporter, Bangladesh has recently turned into an importer of the popular commodity.
It imported tea to the tune of 6.5-million kilos in the calendar year of 2018.
