The Hindu Business Line : Industry urged to focus on CTC tea markets

While tea exporters emphasise the need for strengthening orthodox tea production, the Tea Board Chairman, Mr Basudeb Banerjee, said the industry would have to move into countries that consumed CTC teas.

"South Indian producers have excelled in exports to Pakistan (a CTC market). The volumes have swelled from 2 million kgs a couple of years ago to 11 million kgs today. There is a huge market," he said referring to the recent 11-member Indian delegation to Egypt and Iran and the outcome of the visit.

Iran, he said, had assured purchase of 5-7 million kgs of tea from April 2007.

Besides these developments, there is a need to focus and tap the huge potential in the domestic space, refurbish the image of tea in domestic campaigns and increase the spend on marketing iced teas aggressively.

Conceding that the current year has been better than the last year for tea, Mr Banerjee called upon the industry to wake up to the basic issues such as replanting of age-old bushes and the thrust on increasing domestic consumption.

On the regulatory side, the Tea Board Chairman said: "Tea must have better regulation. Both the industry and the regulator (read Tea Board) have failed."

He stressed the need for self-regulation. "The Government should work in terms of incentives and the industry on self-regulation," Mr Banerjee said.

Referring to the dispute in production figures, he said the Board has corrected the figures twice in the last five years. He blamed the industry for not furnishing the details of production and exports on time.

"There are just about 1,600 factories in the country and collating details from these factories should not be an issue. We must have accurate figures of exports and production," he said.

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