Highlighting a spike in cost of production and a decline in crop in Darjeeling and the Dooars region of West Bengal, the tea industry has urged the Commerce Ministry to declare a floor price for tea.
“The industry has proposed to the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India for declaration of a floor price for Green Leaf (payable to small tea growers) and Made Tea (payable to tea producers) indexed to cost of production,” the Indian Tea Association (ITA) said in a press statement.
The ITA said that the introduction of a floor price would be an immediate solution to the issue of “unremunerative price of tea” without any additional cost to the government, given the fact that the Indian tea market left to itself has not been able to address the low price cycle.
