India's tea exports to Pak to get boost with rail transport

India's hitherto negligible tea exports to Pakistan, the world's second largest consumer of the beverage, are set to get a boost with Islamabad agreeing for the first time to allow import of tea from India through rail, Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said.
Describing this as a ''very significant'' development, Mr Ramesh said at a press conference here last night that this would help India to get a breakthrough in Pakistan's tea market.

Mr Ramesh said Pakistan's Commerce Secretary Syed Asif Shah had agreed to the use of the rail route for tea at a meeting with him last week.

While Pakistan's annual import of tea stood at 140 million kg, India's exports to that country in 2006 was 16 million kg, and that also because Pakistan's traditional tea partner, Kenya, had a bad crop last year, giving a chance to India to increase its exports.

Mr Ramesh said at present, tea is shipped to Pakistan. Describing the long-winded journey of tea from Assam to Pakistan, he said it is first sent to Haldia port in West Bengal, from where it travels to Singapore and Colombo before landing in Karachi.

Similarly, tea from south India has to go to Karachi in Sindh province whereas 60 per cent of Pakistan's tea consumption is in its Punjab province.

The minister said it would take about three to four months to resolve some problems in the container traffic and ''by next year, we plan to use the rail route in a big way.'' He said besides Pakistan, India was also looking at other new markets including Egypt and Iran. While both these countries imported nearly 30 million kg of tea each every year, India's share was a mere two million kg to Egypt and five million kg to Iran.

Besides looking for new markets, India was also going to diversify its exports by stepping up the production of 'orthodox' tea, which was gaining in popularity in Russia compared to the 'CTC' variety.

India, which traditionally exported 'CTC' tea to Russia, was losing its market there as the country was switching to 'orthodox' tea, Mr Ramesh said.

''Out of India's total tea output of 950 million kg, orthodox tea constitutes only about eight per cent. We are aiming to increase this to at least 12 to 13 per cent in the next five years,'' he said.

From the export point of view, South India was particularly significant as 50 per cent of the exports came from this region.

Region wise, while Assam accounted for 50 per cent of India's tea output, West Bengal contributed 25 per cent, Tamil Nadu 17 per cent and Kerala eight per cent, he added.


Source: www.deepikaglobal.com