Photo Courtesy: nenow
Guwahati: India’s tea industry is fighting for survival. Producers are demanding the Ministry of Commerce adopt a Minimum Sustainable Price (MSP) immediately. A Tea Board of India committee proposed this benchmark to bridge the gap between stagnant tea prices and surging production costs. Indian tea output sits at 1,350 to 1,400 million kg annually. Small growers produce 55 percent of that total. They face the most risk.
Input costs rise 10 to 14 percent every year. Meanwhile, auction prices crawl up by only 2 to 3 percent. Wage expenses eat up 60 percent of total production budgets. New state and central floor wages will push those costs even higher. Industry leaders want a composite index based on wage movements and the Consumer Price Index to set the price. They need this mechanism to pay workers and fund replanting.
C.K. Dhanuka, chairman of Dhunseri Tea and Industries, said, “A Minimum Sustainable Price framework is therefore essential to bridge the widening gap between production costs and market realisations and to ensure the long-term sustainability of the industry.”
The push includes the Indian Tea Association, Tea Association of India, United Planters’ Association of Southern India, Confederation of Indian Small Tea Growers Associations, and Federation of Indian Tea Manufacturers Association. Small growers sell green leaf to bought-leaf factories. If factories struggle, they pay growers less. The cycle ruins everyone. Bijoy Gopal Chakraborty of CISTA noted that a stable price is the only way to safeguard small farmers. Deven Singh of FITMA warned that any final plan must reflect the real costs of these processing plants. Suneel Singh Sikand of the ITA, Shailja Mehta of the TAI, and Sanjith R. Nair of UPASI all agreed the system must account for regional differences in geography and labor to stay competitive.
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