Good times ahead

Calcutta, Dec. 29: The Indian tea industry today said it expected the next week’s South-Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit in Pakistan to bring about an improvement in bilateral trade. The summit will be attended by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

“There were reports that the commerce minister was already making efforts to open a road-route for tea exports to Pakistan. If this happens, it will be beneficial to the Indian tea industry,” said Indian Tea Association (ITA) chairman C. K. Dhanuka.

“I hope that some progress would be made in this direction in the Saarc meeting as this would help consumers of Pakistan and tea manufacturers of India,” Dhanuka, who is also managing director of Dhunseri Tea Industries, said.

The recent meltdown in relations between India and Pakistan had already raised hopes among tea manufacturers as export of the commodity to Pakistan is likely to increase to 7.0 million kg in 2003-04 from about 3.5 million kg in 2002-03.

Pakistan has a large tea-drinking community and the total consumption is to the tune of 140 million kg annually. It imports about 100 million kg of tea from Kenya and the remaining from Sri Lanka, China and other countries.

If the road route is opened, Pakistan would be able to get tea from India at much cheaper rates than it was getting at present, industry officials said.

India is looking for a 20-25 million kg of tea export to Pakistan over 2-3 years and opening up of the road-route would be of immense help.

There has already been about 165 per cent jump in tea exports to Pakistan from India till October. This was largely due to a visit of an Indian tea delegation to that country in August.

The visit was preceded by a delegation of Pakistan parliamentarians to India.

During the Indian tea delegation’s visit to Pakistan, a memorandum of understanding was signed between ITA and the Pakistan Tea Association wherein it was agreed that the latter would import 10 million kg of tea from India in the current fiscal.