DISSERTATION – TEA EXPORT OF ASSAM

Introduction :
Tea is indigenous to India and is an area where the country can take a lot of pride. This is mainly
because of its pre-eminence as a foreign exchange earner and its contributions to the country's
GNP. As one of the major tea producing regions in the world, Assam is home to numerous tea
estates that produce more than 360 million kg of tea annually. Beautifully pruned tea bushes
spread like green carpets cover about 2,16,200 hectares of land in Assam. Moreover, the tea
estates in Assam boast of the highest per acre yield in terms of tea production.
Assam is also the birthplace of Indian tea. It was in 1823 when an enterprising Englishman
named Robert Bruce discovered the tea plant growing wild in the state and the year 1839 saw the
first 8 chests of Indian tea making their way to a London auction. The tea producing industry in
Assam has since gone from strength to strength and is greatly contributing to the Indian economy
today.

Reason to choose :
Assam's biggest contribution to the world is its tea . Assam produces some of the finest and most
expensive teas in the world. Other than the Chinese tea variety, Assam is the only region in the
world that has its own variety of tea. I was born at the largest tea producing district of Assam i.e.
Dibrugarh. It was great honour for me to represent my region that’s why I chose this topic.

Hypothesis :
The production as well as export of tea has shown a declining trend in the recent years of the
current decade. Due to this foreign demands are also decreasing day by day as compare to China
and Kenya.

Objectives :
The proposed investigation has the following objectives :
•To investigate how the economic performance of tea determines the well-being of the indian
economy.

•The production as well as export of tea has shown a declining trend in the recent years of the
current decade, so it is the crucial matter of concern.
Methodology :
Not much information is available from primary sources about tea production and exportation of
Assam. All the information available is from secondary sources.

Chapter schemes:
It is envisaged that the dissertation will be divided into six chapters.

Chapter- I : Introduction (including introduction to Assam,tea,literature review,methodology of

data collection and analysis, etc.)

Chapter-II : A Profile of Tea Gardens of Assam (including their locations, size no., it will also
have a subchapter relating to tea auction system, their functions, effectiveness, etc).

Chapter-III: Profile of tea statistics (including weekly & monthly prices,production, auction
prices & graph, world wide exportation,etc.)

Chapter-IV: Quantification of Various Aspects of tea export conditions (including methodology

of quantification)

Chapter-V: A comparative depiction of tea export in recent years(presentation of findings of the

investigation).

Chapter-VI : Summary and Conclusions .

Analysis of data :
The production increased from 835.6 million kg in 1997-98 to 848 million kg in 2000-01, it
started declining thereafter from 847 million kg in 2001-02 to 830 million kg in 2004-05 and
further down to only 667 million kg in 2005-06. Exports of tea, on the other hand has shown a
further deterioration from 211 million kg in 1997-98 to 189 million kg in 1999-2000 and from
204 million kg in 2000-01 to 183 million kg in 2003-04 and to just 101 million kg in 2005-06. In
spite of almost stagnant rupee value in the period, the value of India's tea exports has come down
from Rs. 2192 crore in 1998-99 to Rs. 1637 crore in 2003-04 and to less than RS.1000 crore in
2005-06. Thus our tea exports as proportion to production has declined from 24 percent in 1998-
99 to 15 percent in 2005-06, though it was 25 percent in the previous year.

Conclusion & Recommendation :

USSR was the biggest importer of Assam tea, the industry faced a disaster with the disintegration
of the Soviet Union, and that too at a time when the Indian Tea Association had set an eye on
reaching an annual production of 1000 million kilograms.

With the Soviet Union gone, the 1000-kg target had to be soon abandoned. tea from countries
like China, Sri Lanka and Kenya arrived in Russia within 15 days of placing orders, Indian tea
consignments would take at least 45 days. Another complaint of Russian buyers is that Indian
exporters do not give them a longer credit period, while China and other countries allow even up
to 180 days credit. According to my point of view these are serious matter of concern to uprise
and reinnovate for healthy business of tea exports.

References :

Dr. Rabindra Kr. Choudhury november 2006, special report on India’s tea industry and Assam.

Tea auction centre guwahati(GTAC) www.assamteaxchange.com/marketReport/

Tea board of India www.teaboard.gov.in/

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea-exports

Project Supervisor Submitted by

Mrs. S Matkar Miss Sangeeta Gogoi.