Better brew

Calcutta, Feb. 29: The Tea Board of India has decided to introduce an electronic bidding system for tea in the Guwahati, Calcutta and Coimbatore auction centres by March.

The board has also decided to restrict the electronic bidding system to CTC tea. It will not be applicable to the orthodox and Darjeeling varieties.

Foreign buyers will not be allowed to participate in the process directly. They will have to bid through their local agents. “Local buyers will only be allowed to participate in the electronic bidding procedure,” a Tea Board official said.

For orthodox and Darjeeling tea, the age-old open outcry system of auction will continue.

All the six auction centres in the country will be brought under the electronic bidding system in a phased manner.

IBM has developed the software for the bidding process and Bharti will provide the satellite connection required.

The board will finance the installation of the system in a three-year project. Subsequently, the cost has to be borne by the industry. The board has provided 140 personal computers to the Guwahati auction centre and 60 to Coimbatore.

“We are in the process of procuring PCs for the Calcutta auction centre,” said the official.

“Initially only small lots of tea will be offered,” a senior official of the Calcutta Tea Traders’ Association said.

Buyers at the auction centres will use the software to obtain price quotations on a particular tea category. This will reduce the transaction cost and make prices competitive.

There will be transparency in the entire bidding process. Buyers will come to know the price of each tea category on the computer, clinching better deals with sellers. The entire system is user-friendly for the buyer, the official added.

The project is part of the mid-term export strategy worked out by international consultant Accenture and undertaken by the Tea Board. Accenture has suggested greater transparency in the auction system by making it IT-oriented.

The official added that the Tamil Nadu government has sponsored a new electronic bidding auction centre in the south known as T-Serve.

The electronic bidding procedure will reduce the time involved in tea sales. The brokers will get immediate information about the volume of tea at their disposal. Similarly, the Tea Board will also get a daily report on the total amount of tea being sold as well as individual transactions at the auctions.