British Fund Says 1997 Good For Sri Lanka Tea

Sri Lankan tea prices should remain firm this year on steady demand due to a shortfall in world production, an official of Tea Plantations Investment Trust Plc said on Thursday.

Tea production in Georgia in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), which used to produce about 120-130 million kilograms a year, has disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Colin Kingsnorth, director and fund manager of TPIT told Reuters in Colombo.

Kingsnorth said a population explosion in India, which is converting the country into a net importer of tea, and a drought in Kenya, another major tea producer, will add to the shortfall.

 

In 1992, the Sri Lankan government privatised management of 23 regional plantation companies which own some 600,000 hectares of tea, rubber and coconut.

In late 1995 ownership of the plantation companies was privatised by selling 51 per cent of each to a strategic investor and 20 per cent on the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE).

Ten per cent is reserved for workers and the government retains the balance. (Reuter)

Six firms