Tripura: Interactive meet on establishing Tea Auction centre held

An interactive meet on establishing a tea auction center in Tripura was organized in the state capital Agartala on Tuesday. The meet was organized by the Department of Industries and Commerce in association with the Tea Board of India and the Tripura Tea Development Corporation.

Tripura produces around nine million tonnes of tea, which have to be transported to either Kolkata or Guwahati for its auction and hence a rising demand for setting up an auction center in Agartala.

Accordingly, repeated requests have been made to the Tea Board of India to take initiative for discussion between tea sellers, brokers, and buyers.

Besides, the representatives of the Tea Board of India and the state government have been requested to work out the necessities for starting the auction centre in Agartala. If a common affirmative conclusion is arrived at, then it will be a historical decision for the tea industry in Tripura.

At present, Tea is sent to the Kolkata tea auction center and needs eight to ten days of traveling time plus additional 5 Rupees per kilogram. The other option is to send it to the Guwahati tea auction center which is another 600 Kms away from Agartala.

It needs to be mentioned here that, Tripura is categorized as a traditional tea-growing State with 54 tea estates, 21 tea processing factories, and more than 2500 small tea growers, producing around 9 million kgs of tea each year. This makes Tripura the 5th largest, among the 16 tea-producing states in India.

Tripura is also trying to export its tea to Bangladesh and for which the issue was raised between the two nations during the recent visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Seikh Hasina to New Delhi.