Tea Board asked to draw strategy for continuing e-auctions

With the Tea Board withdrawing support from 2012, will the electronic auctions continue?

Though industry insiders prefer to dismiss this question by stating that it is still too early to arrive at a conclusion, they concede that nothing concrete emerged out of the meeting with Tea Board officials last week.

“We hope that things will be put in place by end-December. We have three months to go,” said a trade source, preferring anonymity.

But as things stand, it is reliably learnt that each of the regional associations will need money to run the e-auction and none of them have so far committed to collect money to meet the recurring cost.

The volume traded on the e-platform is roughly 500 million kg a year.

Trade sources say that equal quantities or may be slightly lower volumes are sold privately as well. “The electronic auction system is functioning smoothly; the initial hitches have been resolved to a large extent but the progress is slow.”

The e-auction volumes are said to be better in the north Indian auction centres compared with South.

Sources feel that the Tea Board should come up with some strategy for promoting e-auction and extending its funding support for a further period of one year. “Huge sums have been invested and in the last 8-9 months, things have almost settled. Support at this juncture would therefore ensure stability,” the source told Business Line .

When asked about the reason for huge volumes traded in private sale, trade sources said “we were told that in the electronic auction system, the buyers” anonymity would be maintained, but this is not so. Apart from that, when there is a bulk order for exports, the trade uses the alternate channel for bulk purchase,' the source said, justifying the reason for continuing with parallel trade channel.

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