Now, a shipment of 3,000 tonnes of tea worth over Tk 20 crore for Pakistan remains stranded because of congestion at Singapore and Colombo ports. The weekly tea auction in Chittagong is also witnessing a downslide both in terms of price and demand.

"The shipping problem has put us into a difficult situation and we are worried about the huge stock of tea that we bought from local auctions for exporting to Pakistan, a major buyer of Bangladesh tea," said Chairman of Tea Traders Association of Bangladesh (TTAB) Feroz Ahmed.

"The Karachi-bound shipment remains stranded due to congestion at transshipment ports in Singapore and Colombo," he added.

"If the situation does not improve within the next 15 days, Bangladesh tea exporters will fail to meet their shipment deadline. We may even lose our export market in Pakistan," Feroz said.

He said the TTAB has already started lobbying the government organisations including Bangladesh Tea Board to do the needful to end the crisis.

Ali Akbar, manager of a private tea exporting firm, said the increase in freight charges is also posing threat to tea export.

"Freight charges rose to US$ 925 for a 20-ft container from US$ 700 and US$ 1,400 for a 40-ft container from US$ 750 only a month ago. Some tea traders now stopped buying tea from the auction as they failed to keep pace with the increased freight charges," Akbar added.

Tea brokers said the weekly tea auction on Tuesday witnessed a downslide both in price and demand due to shipping problems twined with sudden flooding in Dhaka.

Overall average price on Tuesday's auction stood at Tk 67.76 a kg down from Tk 68.68 recorded in the previous auction, brokers said.

Besides, 20.11 percent tea in the auction remained unsold while in the previous auction 10.83 percent tea was unsold, they said.