Shawdesh Desk:

Tannery owners on Thursday promised to pay their dues to the wholesale rawhide merchants across the country in three phases but the dates for the payment were yet to be determined.

The Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industries on Thursday convened a meeting with tanners and rawhide merchants at the federation office in the city over the long-standing dues of tannery owners to the merchants.

Following the meeting the FBCCI president Sheikh Fazle Fahim told reporters that tanners primarily agreed to resolve the payment issue in  three instalments.

In the first phase, tanners would pay dues for the years between 1990 and 2010, in the second phase wholesalers would receive outstanding amount for 2011 to 2015 and in the last phase, the tanners would make payment against dues for the years between 2016 and 2019, the president of the apex trade body said.

Fahim also said that the meeting ended without determining any date and procedure of payment and the trade body would sit further with the leather sector businesses on August 31 to settle the issues.

Bangladesh Finished Leather, Leather Goods and Footwear Exporters Association president Mohiuddin Ahmed Mahin,

Bangladesh Tanners Association chairman Shaheen Ahmed and Bangladesh Hides and Skins Merchants Association president Md Delwar Hossain, among others, attended the meeting.

The FBCCI convened the meeting as industries minister Nurul Majid Mahmud Humayun and prime minister’s private industry and investment affairs adviser Salman F Rahman on August 18 in a meeting at commerce ministry instructed the trade body to act as the mediator to realise the dues of the traders from the tanners.

The commerce ministry had arranged the meeting to resolve the deadlock between the tanners and the wholesalers as hide merchants announced that they would not sell rawhides to the tanners until they paid the Tk 400 crore owed to them.

The procurement of rawhides of the sacrificial animals witnessed an unprecedented price disorder this year and a huge quantity of hides got wasted when due to lack of minimum prices small traders dumped them into the rivers and left them to rot on the roads.

Tanners and wholesalers blamed each other for the price fall of raw hides during Eid-ul-Azha.

Tanners alleged that the syndicate of wholesalers was responsible for low price while wholesalers claimed that they failed to pay reasonable prices of hides due to non-payment of dues by the tanners.