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Pakistan raising tea with Chinese help

M. R. Subramani

CHENNAI, Oct. 29

PAKISTAN has begun tea cultivation on a small-scale but going by the plans in the pipeline, it could assume larger proportions.

This development comes at a time when India is once again looking to Islamabad as a prospective buyer of its teas. Efforts made in 1998 to prevail upon Pakistan to buy Indian teas yielded temporary results as only a small quantity was sold.

Then, Pakistan had compulsions to buy Indian tea as production in Kenya and Sri Lanka, its main suppliers, was hit due to drought attributed to the El Nino factor, caused by warming of the Pacific Ocean.

After that there had been no progress. But this year, faced with the compulsion to raise its exports, the tea sector, particularly in the south, has been desperately looking to push its tea to Pakistan.

However, Islamabad is now seriously trying tea cultivation in the Lower Swat Valley and plains of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), bordering Afghanistan.

Helping Pakistan in this effort is China, which has recommended tea planting in 60,000 hectares (ha).

Media reports emanating from Islamabad say a complete

survey had been done with the Chinese cooperation and 2 lakh ha had been identified for tea cultivation.

The National Tea Research Institute of Pakistan (NTRI) feels 1 lakh ha is enough to meet domestic demand.

As per the latest figures, Pakistan nearly imports 140 million kg of tea valued at around Rs (Pakistani) 1,000 crore.

Pakistan has found the NWFP climate conducive to grow Chinese varieties and it is planning to provide incentives to tea growers to achieve self-sufficiency in production in the next few years.

Reports say tea cultivation had begun around 1990 in Pakistan, while Lever Brothers Pakistan Ltd began a formal cultivation project last year with some growers being roped in.

More importantly, the quality of tea produced in Pakistan had been found to be comparable with that from Kenya or Sri Lanka.

A Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) official has reportedly termed the quality as ``the best produced anywhere in the world''.

NTRI has begun taking more concrete steps to make Pakistan a leading tea-growing nation and as a first step, it is setting up a black tea plant of 1000 kg per day processing capacity. The plant is expected to become operational by April next.

Meanwhile, the first tea consignment was exported from Pakistan earlier this month to United Arab Emirates.

The 5,000 kg consignment valued at $25,000 was re-export of tea imported at an average $2 a kg. Tapal Danedar, the exporter, has said it would try to make non-resident Pakistanis to prefer its tea ``instead of Chinese or other tea''.