Facilitating ways and means of transportation of tea exports across the Pakistan-India border through the Atari-Wagah route would be high on agenda in the meeting scheduled in the first half of next month between the Union minister of state for commerce and industries and the Pakistan Tea Association.
Jairam Ramesh, Union minister of state for commerce and industries is scheduled to visit Pakistan during the first half of next month along with Basudeb Bannerjee, chairman of Tea Board in response to an invitation from the Pakistan Tea Association and would be accompanied by members of the Indian Tea Association and UPASI.
Speaking on the sidelines of the launch of the new tea e-auction system in Kolkata, the minister said, “Since Pakistan is a crucial market for India with tea exports to Pakistan expected to scale up from 10 million kilograms (mn kgs) to 16 mn kgs this fiscal we would be discussing ways and means of ensuring quicker and easier transportation of tea export through land route which would be more cost effective compared to the sea route.” “Last year Indian tea exports to Pakistan was close to 10-11 mn kgs. This year we are hopeful of increasing that to 16 mn kgs, ” said Basudeb Banerjee, chairman, Tea Board of India.
We would be looking at a number of issues besides easing transportation problem of tea exports to Pakistan, said the minister.
Pakistan a highly price sensitive market is largely dominated by Kenya which plays a very prominent role. Since Pakistan imports bulk of the tea from Kenya the tea traffic is largely routed through the sea.
The Karachi market in Pakistan is fed through the sea route traffic and the Islamabad-Lahore market is fed through land route.
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But off late many Pakistani businessmen have shown interest of importing tea from India and if India has to scale up exports to Pakistan the logistics would have to be a combination of both the sea and land route since land route is very cost effective.
Amritsar a very important centre of tea trade lies only 25 kms away from Lahore. The land route that is officially recognised and now allowed is the Atari-Wagah route which can be potentially utilised for tea exports to both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
India would be spending Rs 150 crore by 2011 to develop the infrastructure at Atari land customs station. Technically now that tea can be exported through the land route infrastructure has to be developed on both sides of the border to make way for the tea-traffic, he said
The minister also claimed that he had made requests to the pakistani authorities and would discuss it in the upcoming meeting.