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Budget 2016: Tea industry feels let down by centre

India has already lost the tag that it is the largest producer of tea in the world.

Ooty: The Union budget 2016-17 has failed to bring cheers to the tea growers and has turned out to be a disappointment to the tea sector with no announcement on fixing of minimum support price for green tea leaf and also no other SOPs to recover the struggling tea industry in the Nilgiris.

Stating that the tea growers’ expectations and hopes were high ahead of the budget and Mr Arun Jaitley only disappointed and rejected the tea sector, Mr A. Natraj, vice-president of the Nilgiris small tea growers and bought leaf tea manufacturers association, said that the government knew well how the tea industry is struggling and their expectations to tide over the crisis and to recover from it. But, unfortunately, this budget failed to address the issues of the tea industry.

‘India has already lost the tag that it is the largest producer of tea
in the world. It has been pushed to second spot by China.

In the global market, something needs to be done urgently to re-capture this tag and increase the competitive potential of Indian tea. Sadly, nothing has been mentioned in the budget on this.

Not only that, the health of the tea industry in total, including the cultivation and processing, had not been that good over the past many years. Unfortunately there is lack of support in the budget to revive the
ailing tea industry,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr.Manjai V. Mohan, President of the Nilgiris Tea Cultivators Associations Federation, said that the expectations of Small Tea Growers (STG), who form the bulk of the farming community in Nilgiris, have been belied.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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