Commerce Advisor Sheikh Bashiruddin said, sacrificial animal skins are being sold at the price fixed by the government. A special team of the Commerce Ministry is working to implement the fixed price.
He gave this information to reporters after inspecting the activities related to the proper management of sacrificial animal skins at Posta in Lalbagh on Sunday (June 8, 2025) evening.
Responding to a question about the price of skins, the advisor said, the price of skins that we had fixed was the price including salt. The seven hundred to eight hundred taka that is being sold is without salt. This price is higher than the price at which it was sold for the past many years.
Responding to the question that seasonal traders are not getting the price of skins, the commerce advisor said, this is true in some cases, but it is untrue in most cases. It is untrue because some seasonal traders who have no experience in preserving skins are taking the skins and half-rotting them. If a semi-rotten leather is sold for seven hundred or eight hundred taka, it is too much. And the good leather is being sold for twelve to thirteen hundred taka.
He said, the work that we started on the instructions of the chief advisor is to make the leather suitable for preservation and storage by encouraging local storage and salting. As a result, a situation is created in the market management and a balance is created between the demand and supply of the market.
He also said that at the field level, the district administration and the upazila administration are working on leather management.
At the national level, we have set up a control room. There, leather management is being monitored 24 hours a day. In most cases, we have seen that the leather is getting a fair price, which is salted leather. It is being sold at the price fixed by the government. In some cases, social media and some mainstream media are also spreading wrong information. I saw a piece of information from Rangunia, Chittagong, that the leather has rotted. A seasonal trader brought about 620 leathers, but he did not make the leather suitable for preservation. The leather is half-rotten. Stating that a propaganda is being run about this, he said, unscrupulous traders are planning to bring another collapse in the leather market.
The government has generously given salt only to make it convenient. It is not right to put all the responsibility on the government. If you do not fulfill your own responsibility, it is not appropriate to even wish for it. Stating that the government has taken initiatives to build capacity. Everyone should come forward to cooperate in this work. I hope that you will get the right price by applying salt and storing it properly. I hope you will get a higher price than that.
The government has lifted the ban on the export of raw hides and wet blue hides to create demand. It has given a discount of 220 crore taka in incentives. Salt has been delivered to every district, upazila, and village across the country from mosque to mosque. Now everyone has to join in with this. I think it would be a shameful act to try to damage the leather market by blaming the government alone and spreading some wrong information and misinformation, he added.
The trade advisor said, “The price of leather has increased today compared to yesterday. I hope the price of salted leather will increase further tomorrow. We have created the capacity to preserve leather, through which we can keep (save) leather for two to three months. We have appealed not to sell it until we get a suitable price while keeping it.”
We have tried to do everything possible on behalf of the government to increase the price of leather and make it suitable for the purpose of realizing the rights of orphans. He expressed his hope that the political government will do more next year from this year’s lessons, he said.
At this time, Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce Mahbubur Rahman, Additional Secretary (Export) Md. Abdur Rahim Khan and President of Bangladesh Tanners Association (BTA) Md. Shaheen Ahmed were present.
