Tea exports from India, the world's largest consumer, grew 20.28 per cent to 59.9 million kg in the first four months of the current year on increased demand.
The country exported 49.8 million kg in the January-April period of the last year, according to data released by the Tea Board.
The average price for Indian tea in export markets, however, fell to Rs 123.34 per kg in the reporting period from Rs 127.63 a kg in the year-ago period.
In terms of value, exports fetched Rs 739.67 crore during the January-April, 2010, period, up 16.32 per cent from last year's export value of Rs 635.87 crore in the same period.
While exports from North India remained almost flat at 27.37 million kg, shipments from South India grew to 32.59 million kg against 22.53 million kg in January-April, 2009.
Tea Board Chairman Basudeb Banerjee had recently said that exports of the beverage may go up in the range of between 5 per cent and 10 per cent during the current fiscal, though the official target was fixed at 200 million kg, the quantity of shipments in 2009-10.
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India exported 190 million kg of tea in 2008-09.
The country exports CTC (crush-tear-curl) variety tea to Egypt, Pakistan and the UK and the premium orthodox variety of tea to Iraq, Iran and Russia.
India faces competition from Kenya and other African countries for exporting CTC tea, while for the orthodox variety, the competition is from Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
Tea output in the country came down to 979 million kg in 2009 against 981 million kg in the previous year. The country expects to produce nearly 1 billion kg of tea this year.