Around 5 lakh pieces of rawhides have been collected during this Eid festival in last few days and from Friday next the leather traders expect to collect and buy another 90 lakh pieces of salted skin.
Bangladesh Tanners Association Chairman Shaheen Ahmed said this at a press conference held in Dhanmondi on Wednesday.
He said, “Tanners have directly bought 5.5 lakh rawhides during Eid-ul-Adha this year. Of this, 3.5 lakh skins have been collected on Eid-day alone. This collection is about 2.5 lakh more than the quantity last year. Last year, tannery owners bought about 3 lakh pieces of rawhides.”
Shaheen Ahmed said that the global demand for goat skin has decreased. We shifted the tannery industries from Hazaribagh in 2017. We have five to six industries in Savar that process goat skin but a large number of goat skin tanneries could not be shifted from Hazaribagh. It has had an adverse effect for several years.
He further said, “We think that the decisions taken in the overall management before Eid this year have been timely and a monitoring cell comprising of deputy commissioners has been formed at the upazila level. We have witnessed the effect of that at the field level. Leather has been preserved after adding salt in different upazilas.”
“Another good decision - not to allow the skin to enter Dhaka for 7 days. Tannery owners also do not have the capacity to collect and store millions of pieces of raw skin in one or two days. That is why the skin has been preserved with salt in different districts,” he added.
“From Thursday or Friday we will start collecting salted skin. Rawhides collection will start from different markets across the country. This year, the skin is less likely to be damaged as those were salted on time. We have had similar information that five to six lakh goat skins have been damaged. However, we will be able to collect 90 lakh to 95 lakh pieces of skins,” Shaheen said.
Asked about the prices of leather products, he replied that the prices of leather products are increasing and the demand for leather is also increasing in the international market but why it is declining in Bangladesh is not known.”
He also said that the price of leather products or leather has not decreased abroad. “The leather that we are producing cannot be sold to brand buyers. We are selling leather to non-compliant buyers, that is, Chinese buyers.”