Govt Rolls Out Strategy To Boost Tea Output, Export .

Aiming to boost tea production and its exports to five new markets, the government is coming out with a comprehensive strategy in a month or two to revamp the tea industry.

India’s junior commerce and industry minister Joytiraditiya Madhavrao Scindia told Financial Chronicle on Monday the strategy would be to improve production, processing and step up value addition. He, however, declined to give details of the strategy saying it was being given final shape and would be unveiled in a month or two.

Presently, India produces 1,000 million kg of tea of which 800 million kg is consumed domestically while 200 million kg are exported. Indian tea is mostly CTC variety while the tea preferred abroad is orthodox variety, Scindia said adding five new countries will be added to the list of exporters without giving further details.

Indian tea is highly labour intensive, but the second-generation workers are not keen to pursue this work. Being labour intensive, the cost of production is high as compared to its competitors, China, Keyna and Sri Lanka. But the best tea is produced in India besides being the largest producer in the world.

Though Indian tea has large export potential, exports have been declining and the government is keen to reverse it. One possibility is to introduce more flavours that perhaps would be one of the issues to deal with in the proposed new strategy. There is a demand to make Indian tea more fashionable like coffee.

Although tea is produced in 14 states, Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala account for 98 per cent of the production. Assam and West Bengal account for 75 per cent of tea production.

Re-plantation of ageing tea crop began 3-4 years back and the process will continue for some more years as it has to be done in a phased manner so as not to hinder overall production. This re-planting is done once in 35-40 year to overcome the problem of falling productivity due to ageing plants.

Sri Lanka and Kenya have increased their tea productivity, while it has been slipping in India year after year. Sri Lanka and Kenya along with China have overtaken India in tea exports, which have slipped to fourth place.

In recent years, there has been paradigm shift as more people in the export markets have switched over to tea bags. This switchover in Indian tea exports has not happened fully. While Sri Lanka and Kenya have been tapping new tea markets, India’s exports have mostly confined to traditional export markets

Scindia, who recently returned from a tour of Latin American countries, saw Indian exports growing by 30-40 per cent to those countries. In 2010-11, India’s exports grew by 60 per cent to $27 billion from $17 billion in the previous years.

Though China is a major competitor, Indian exports is being increasingly recognised for their quality in Latin American countries.

Source : mydigitalfc.com