Producers facing quality issues quality issues as competition from Sri Lanka gets stiffer
By Ashis Biswas
KOLKATA: Despite official assurances to set up at least three tea testing laboratories in North Bengal to improve quality control methods, preliminary work undertaken by the West Bengal Government has made little progress. North Bengal tea producers recently told newsmen that they had drawn the attention of West Bengal Minister for Labour Mr Malay Ghatak to this and other major problems they have been facing in recent years.
Such testing laboratories would have helped in detecting any illegal mixing of cheaper varieties with better quality of tea before they reach the market. Further, they would have helped in protecting the relatively costlier Darjeeling varieties from being misused by a powerful group of operators in Nepal who have been running this racket for years. There have been allegations against a few senior government officials and other influential people for helping such operators to continue their profitable shady business. .
They sell, fairly large amounts of such inferior mixtures of tea in the North Indian markets, but specially in the border regions of North Bengal, The mixing is done in Nepal.
In recent years, maintaining the high quality of various strains of the Darjeeling .varieties has become increasingly difficult because of such illegal mixing. Numerous complaints have been made to Nepalese authorities, Customs officials as well as the West Bengal police towards the smuggling of Nepalese tea into Darjeeling, Siliguri and Jalpaiguri, but the situation had not changed much. Senior officials of the GOI’s Ministry of Commerce, are known to have taken up the matter with their counterparts in Nepal.
Darjeeling producers complain that it has become very difficult for their highly priced varieties to be sold at their normal rates. Their international buyers are well aware of the problem. They are more reluctant than before to buy different Darjeeling products as easily as before. Export earnings have not increased to the desired extent, as a result.
One major advantage tea producers of Nepal enjoy over their Indian counterparts is that they do not have to pay any duty or tax as they export their products to India. Indian exporters on the other hand are subject to a compulsory 40% duty, which makes their items costlier in Nepal. This results in larger quantities of Nepalese tea reaching the Indian markets at cheaper prices, regardless of any consideration of quality!
In recent years, this invasion of the comparatively inferior varieties of Nepal-produced tea in the north Bengal districts has resulted in a definite market share for them in north Bengal markets. According to figures published in one north Bengal daily, (in terms of million kilos,) 15.85 mkgs of Nepal tea were sold in India in 2019 ; 23.79% mkgs sold in 2020; 26.51 mkgs sold in 2021, 29.84 mkgs in 2022 and 23.65 mkgs in 2023.. .
The other area of common concern in north Bengal and elsewhere in India is challenge posed by the increasing sale of Kenya tea. Organisations like the Tea Board, Indian Tea Association and other authorities have reported various problems they were facing, especially relation to production as a whole.
The entire North Indian areas under tea, beginning from Assam in the East, over the past decade had been hit hard by the climatic impacts of global warming. The quantities of rainfall had declined, and torrential precipitation very often led to major floods and waterlogging that damaged the bushes and crops in general. On the other hand, the quantum of heat had increased. Winters were warmer as well as shorter. Water sources like ponds and lakes were drying up. Seasons like spring and autumn had become noticeably warmer.
Such changes had resulted in a definite pattern in the general climate all over India and the very production of tea had turned into a challenge. Domestic production had also declined and small plantations were going out of business.
To help the industry survive in the coming years, central help/subsidies from GOI, and the Commerce Ministry would be desperately necessarily. Some time ago, the industry had submitted a demand for an assistance of Rs 40 crore from GOI. Certain changes were being considered by the producers to improve production and export immediately. It had been suggested that SOPs in the production and trading procedures currently being followed in Sri Lanka be studied and changes made wherever possible to improve the state of the industry. (IPA Service)
