Guwahati, Oct. 20: The Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) has requested the Tea Board to set up a core committee comprising stakeholders in a tea auction to help design a workable system for holding electronic auctions.

Sources said the decision to request the Tea Board was taken at a meeting last week, when it discussed the new model proposed by the board for e-auction. A letter will soon be written to this effect.

Sources said the members wanted some more clarifications on the new model proposed by the board, which had circulated a draft discussion paper for getting views and comments regarding the proposal.

The basic auction principles under the new model proposed by the board is that registered manufacturers should be able to sell any category, quantity and grade of tea through the public auction system and registered eligible buyers should be able to buy any category, quantity and grade of tea.

It said the auctioneer and buyer will judge tea only on the basis of standard and quality and there shall not be any indication of garden name or garden mark in the catalogue.

It also called for dispensing the “lots” system. Currently, the entire supply of tea from a garden is broken up into lots of convenient denominations and then put up for auction. Due to this practice, considerable time is spent in administration and introduction of these lots serially for auction.

The new model would also phase out the need for printing of catalogues, as the total tea available for auction can be seen on the terminals, which would help facilitate the operations of the auctioneers and ease the process of participating in auctions.

The board says that the produce that is sold in the auctions follows a set pattern, which will enable one to standardise the list of tea that is to be auctioned off.

It has called upon the tea trade associations to introduce tea that would essentially be a unique combination of mark, garden and grade.

Each of the garden or mark or grade would be assigned codes and a combination of these will produce the unique tea that can be sold at that auction centre.

It said the strength of the auction system would largely depend on the speed at which information is disseminated to the participants and its capacity and capability to process the orders.

The auction system will provide online information to market participants who are logged into the system.

It will give bid confirmations with a split second response, automatically match the bids and give out acceptance confirmations within closure of session time of that tea.