Bangladesh's Ministry of Commerce has formed a 10-member task team to draw up a policy for raising the country's tea production, branding and exports, and given it one month to report, according to an official order.

The order, signed by Deputy Secretary Dilowara Alo and issued on June 7, names Mamun Rashid, chairman of the state-owned National Tea Company Limited, to chair the panel, The Business Standard and The Daily Star reported. Its members are drawn from the Bangladesh Tea Board, the Bangladesh Tea Research Institute, the Bangladesh Tea Association, the Tea Traders Association of Bangladesh, the small tea-garden owners, and the National Tea Company. The panel was directed to submit a policy framework to the commerce secretary within a month of the order, a deadline that falls in early July. As of this writing its recommendations had not been made public.

The export ambition is the striking part, because Bangladesh has almost no tea to spare. The country produced 94.91 million kg in 2025, up 2.01 percent on the year, but exported only 1.64 million kg of it, down from 2.45 million kg in 2024, according to Bangladesh Tea Board figures reported by The Daily Star. Domestic demand runs at 85 to 90 million kg a year, so the crop is very nearly drunk where it is grown. High production costs have left Bangladeshi tea uncompetitive abroad against Kenya and China, the same report noted.

The industry those costs sit on is not small at home. It rests on 169 gardens across more than 280,000 acres, with about 55 percent of output coming from the Moulvibazar district of Sylhet, according to the board's figures.

The task team was formed days before the Bangladesh Tea Association held its 65th annual general meeting in Dhaka on June 10, which was chaired by Kamran T. Rahman, The Business Standard reported.

A policy aimed at exports has to reckon with that arithmetic first. With barely 2 percent of the crop leaving the country and cost the main obstacle, the task team's real test is the auction price, not the plan on paper. Whether a committee can change it is a question the market will answer, not the order that created it.

Sources: The Business Standard, "Commerce ministry forms 10-member task team to chart future of tea industry"; The Daily Star, "10-member panel formed to modernise Bangladesh's tea sector"; The Business Standard, "BTA holds AGM to review tea industry activities"; The Daily Star, "Tea output edges up in 2025 despite export headwinds".