Orthodox tea production to go up for higher global market share

Kolkata, Mar 18 (UNI) To protect India's share in international tea market and substantially increaee the export volume, the Tea Board has decided to hike the production of Orthodox tea by 40 per cent in phases in next three to four years.

This was informed here today by Union minister of State for Commerce and Industries Jairam Ramesh, while speaking to newsmen on the sidelines of a meeting on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to prevent HIV/AIDS in tea gardens.

Expressing concern at the dwindling volume of export of Indian tea to the traditional four countries namely the UK, Russia, UAE and Iraq, Dr Ramesh said though the Tea Board had identified three new countries like Pakistan, Egypt and Iran as the emerging global markets for Indian CTC tea, the international popularity of Orthodox tea had made necessary efforts to increase the volume of production of that kind of tea in India to maintain the current rate of export.

Accordingly, Dr Ramesh said, the Tea Board had set a target to increase the production of high quality Orthodox tea in various gardens to hike their total production from the present 80 million kgs to about 120 million kgs per annum by 2010 and capture more share in the global tea market.

Keeping this in view, the union minister said, Tea Board Chairman Basudeb Banerjee was leading a five-member high power delegation to Cairo in Egypt on a four day trip from March 23 for setting up a 'Global Tea Marketing and Promotion Centre' at the Egyptian capital under joint venture with local private partners.

''When set up in about a year, the new centre would help promote high volume sale of Indian tea not only in variouis African countries but also to Australia and New Zealand in the coming years,'' Dr Ramesh emphasised.

Incidentally, last year India could export only about two million kgs of tea to Egypt, compared to about 15 million kgs imported from Kenya, and wanted to take it upto at least ten milion kgs by 2008, Dr Ramesh pointed out.

Last year out of total 930 million kgs of tea produced in India, only about 185 million were exported. This year the Tea Board had set a target of 1,000 million kg of tea production and achieve about 20 per cent hike in export volume, the Tea Board Chairman, who was also present, said.

UNI