Centre reviews status of tea industry in Bengal

The Commerce Ministry has held a meeting with all stakeholders of the tea industry in West Bengal and reviewed the status tea gardens in the state.
"We have reviewed the status of the tea gardens with all the stakeholders. We have also met the state Chief Secretary, Labour and Industry Secretaries to discuss the health of the tea gardens in West Bengal," Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia told reporters at the launch of Pan-India E-auction System for tea here today.
"There is no reason to be alarmed about the health of the tea gardens here. Yes, some of the gardens are under stress and some are doing good," Teaotia said.

She said that the Ministry and the Tea Board had urged the state government to implement all central welfare schemes applied to plantation areas.
Responding to a query relating to the deaths of several tea garden workers allegedly due to under-nutrition, she said after the central schemes are properly implemented, it is expected that such deaths would not occur any more.
Launching the pan-India e-auctioning of tea, she said that buyers would now have access to tea available across the country.

"Buyers or sellers can register in any of the seven auction centres of the country and conduct transactions in a seamless and transparent manner", she said.

The auctioning system would also help in better price discovery and increase mass participation of the buyers, she added.
The system had been developed by NSE. IT and the settlement banker would be Bank of India (BoI) as it would manage the payment gateway.
Tea Board chairman Santosh Sarangi said that some of the concerns raised by the tea industry relating to settlement system and VAT payment would get redressed shortly.
The first electronic tea auctioning system had been introduced in Kolkata in 2009, while first manual auctioning started in 1861 from here.