The Tea Board has cancelled the licences of 157 exporters, mostly merchant-exporters, for their failure to comply with statutory rules and regulations.

Also, show-cause notices have been served on another 243 of them on the same ground.

Anyone planning to export tea must necessarily obtain a licence from Tea Board.

A tea exporter is first issued a temporary licence for three years. Depending on the export performance it is renewed every three years. However, the renewal becomes redundant if the exporter concerned can prove that he has exported one lakh kg or more of tea every year for three successive years.

Once this stipulation is fulfilled, the exporter will be issued a permanent licence which does not require renewal.

However, any exporter exporting less than one lakh kg a year will have to have his licence renewed every three years.

The complaint against those whose licences have been cancelled is that they refrain from submitting to the Tea Board the mandatory returns giving out the export details.

The apprehension is that they just sit on the licences without caring to export.

Tea exporters are entitled to some incentives under relevant scheme of Tea Board. It might be noted that an advisory body, Tea Council of India, comprising representatives of exporters, both merchant and producer, brokers and Tea Board has been constituted to monitor the quality of exportable tea.

The body started functioning from June this year.

Meanwhile, Tea Board has cancelled manufacturing licences of 120 tea manufacturing units, all in South India, for not non-submission of returns to the board, according to Board sources.

> santanu.sanyal@thehindu.co.in

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