Leather traders in Bogura will begin buying sacrificial hides for Eid-ul-Adha carrying BDT 220 million in unpaid bills from Dhaka-based tanneries, arrears that have accumulated over nearly a decade, the district traders’ association said.
Around 200,000 raw hides are supplied from Bogura each Eid season, according to the Bogura district leather traders’ association. More than 200 traders routinely borrow ahead of the festival to purchase hides and salt, relying on full payment from Dhaka-based tanneries to recover their capital. Instead, tannery owners have withheld payment year after year, leaving the principal and any profit trapped.
“It’s a cash business. We have to take loans before Eid to buy the hides, but the Dhaka buyers take the stock and don’t pay the full amount,” said Jahedur Rahman, vice-president of the traders’ association. “The arrears have been building for years and traders are in serious difficulty.”
The association has 300 registered members. Traders said the original understanding was that tanneries would settle in cash, not on credit. Repeated verbal assurances that payments were imminent went unfulfilled, they said.
Mukul Hossain, the association’s acting general secretary, said tanneries were expected to clear the dues this year but have not yet done so. “If the money doesn’t come, we will still raise capital, even by borrowing, to buy hides. But if the cash gets stuck again, it will all turn into a loss.”
Labour and salt now cost BDT 300 to 400 per hide, Hossain said, adding that setting up tanneries in Bogura or elsewhere in northern Bangladesh would resolve the chronic payment crisis by allowing local processing.
He added that the hide trade in Bogura city alone handles roughly 70,000 raw hides, while the figure is three times that across the district.
The district’s livestock officer, Kazi Ashraful Islam, said Bogura expects a surplus of about 300,000 animals this year, with traders already trucking livestock to Dhaka, Chattogram, Narayanganj and Sylhet for the sacrificial market.