A tea producers’ body has written to the Centre highlighting that there is an urgent need to curb import of inferior quality tea and consequent manipulation in its place of origin during re-export. The Tea Association of India (TAI) also stressed the need for checking ingress of such quality of tea into the domestic market. A representation to Union Minister of State for Commerce and Anupriya Patel by TAI vice-president Ajay Jalan here on Wednesday said the Foreign Trade policy should focus on improving the country’s market share in existing markets and products as well as exploring new ones.
The TAI raised the issues relating to the import of tea in its proposals to the Central government for upholding the sustainability of the tea industry, which employs over 11 lakh people directly, with almost half of them being Women. It pointed that the import of tea has been increasing in the country at a steady pace over the last five years, going up from 20.97 million kg in 2016 to 23.79 million kg in 2020.
The TAI also pointed to violations in re-export of duty-free imported tea and, quoting Tea Board figures, said against 60.35 million kg of tea imported into India in the last three years, only 23.43 million kg were re-exported, which underlines the fact that the rest 36.92 million kg of imported tea have been sold in the country.