Transport bottlenecks have forced India’s northeastern states to procure much needed rice from neighbouring Myanmar and Bangladesh. The Indian government has floated bids to import rice from Myanmar for Manipur and Mizoram. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) is ferrying rice from other parts of India via Bangladesh for Tripura. The poor transport connectivity in some northeastern states worsened after train services from the rest of India were halted in southern Assam Oct 1, snapping rail connection to Tripura, Manipur and Mizoram. This has...

Tea prices in Bangladesh fell at the weekly auction on Tuesday from the previous sale, due to larger supplies of inferior quality, although strong demand for quality leaf limited the slide and sales rose. Bangladeshi tea fetched an average of 183.46 taka ($2.39) per kg at the auction, below the 184.74 taka at the previous sale, said an official at National Brokers Ltd. More than 2.47 million kg was offered at the auction centre in Chittagong, with 18.3 percent going unsold. The last time, about 2.45 million kg was offered, of which nearly a fifth w...

The government has approved a Taka 105 crore proposal, which will help annual cotton output in the country to soar seven-fold by 2018. Currently, Bangladesh produces only 100,000 bales of cotton, which meets only 3 percent of the annual requirement of the textile mills in the country, the Daily Star reported. By implementing this project, it is expected that cotton production in the country will touch 700,000 cotton bales. By means of planned cotton farming, output will be hiked by implementing the project in 35 upazilas under 10 distr...