Tea committee to meet in January

The tea advisory committee constituted by the ministry of commerce and industry to monitor the implementation of the action plan prepared to follow up the recommendations that emerged at the stakeholders' conference in September 2004 was expected to meet in January 2005 and begin work.

C K Dhanuka, chairman of Indian Tea Association (ITA) and a member of the committee, said the main objective of the committee was to see that the recommendations were implemented.

The first meeting of the committee was likely to be in January 2005.

The committee would endeavour to draft a long-term policy for Indian tea and scrap the present system of looking for knee-jerk solutions to immediate problems.

The committee's scope would stretch from productivity, to export and prices and other issues that were in the domain of the industry.

The 31-member committee had representation from associations of producers, research organisations, auctioneers, small growers, bought leaf factories, labour welfare organisations, financial institutions, state governments nominees from Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, and some leading representatives from the industry.

Dhanuka said, the committee would also into the ways and means of spending the additional excise duty fund, which had accumulated over the past two years.

The financial institutions representatives could chalk out the replantation loan scheme, which had a corpus of Rs 4,000 crore.

The committee would be headed by the additional secretary (plantations), department of commerce, as chairman while the chairman of the Tea Board would be vice chairman and the deputy secretary (plantations) of the department of commerce the member-secretary.

The Union minister for commerce and industry, Kamal Nath, has indicated some time ago that a special package for tea would be finalised soon by utilising Re 1 per kg additional excise duty on tea.

The detailed package would be placed before the Cabinet for approval shortly.