Bangladesh's tea gardens and small growers earned a record $181 million at auction in the 2025-26 season, Bangladesh Tea Board data show. That is up $46 million from two years earlier, after the government set a minimum sale price.

The floor was first trialed in 20 auctions in 2024, after Bangladesh's parliamentary standing committee on commerce met in March that year, then expanded nationwide in May 2025, The Business Standard reported. It fixes the minimum price for tea from Sylhet and Chattogram at 245 taka a kilogram, close to the industry's own estimated production cost, and sets a lower floor of 170 taka a kilogram for North Bengal's bought-leaf tea.

The average auction price has climbed accordingly: from 171.24 taka ($1.39) a kilogram in 2023-24 to 245.50 taka ($2.00) a kilogram in 2025-26, Tea Board figures show. Total auction income rose from 1,664.21 crore taka ($135 million) to 2,226 crore taka ($181 million) over the same two years, even as the volume sold slipped from 97.186 million kilograms to 90.672 million kilograms.

Kazi Arfan Ullah, manager of the Neptune Tea Garden, owned by MM Ispahani Ltd, said the minimum-price mechanism had helped ensure better returns and supported the industry's survival through a difficult period, The Business Standard reported. Tahseen Ahmed Chowdhury, chief operating officer of the Consolidated Tea and Lands Company (Bangladesh), told the Bengali-language outlet Bhalo Sangbad in May that the floor price had revived a sector he described as dying, and that a good completed auction year should improve production this season.

The policy responds to a cost squeeze the industry says had left many estates unable to repay loans, pay workers, or invest in production, as labour wages and the cost of gas, fertiliser, electricity and coal all rose while auction prices stagnated. Bangladesh now has 172 tea estates plus a growing smallholder sector, most prominently in Panchagarh, now the country's second-largest producing district behind Moulvibazar. In 2025, Moulvibazar accounted for 47% of national production, Panchagarh for 21%, Habiganj for 16% and Chattogram for 11%, according to the Tea Board.

A floor price raises what a grower is paid; it does nothing to lower the cost of growing the leaf, the wages, fuel and fertiliser cited as the original case for the policy. Whether two years of better auctions translate into new planting, rather than just relief for existing estates, is the question the 2026-27 season will answer.

Sources: The Business Standard, "Higher auction price fetches Tk562cr more for tea sector in 2 years"; Bhalo Sangbad, "চা বাগানগুলোর আয় বেড়েছে ৪৬৫ কোটি টাকা" (bn).