The government has undertaken a Tk 9.67 billion (967.36 crore) draft roadmap to develop the tea sector of the country under the Vision 2021 framework, reports UNB.
A number of work plans have been included in the roadmap.
These include development of the tea gardens and improving the skills of tea workers, development of the under-developed tea gardens, expansion of small scale tea cultivation projects, modernising and balancing the factories in the tea gardens, strengthening the project development units and improving the skills of officials, strengthening the Bangladesh Tea Research Institute, infrastructural development, expansion of the irrigation in the tea gardens, augmenting the welfare of the tea labourers and development of management and human resources in the tea gardens.
According to the official document, some Tk 9.67 billion will be needed to implement the 12-year roadmap in three phases.
Of the total amount, it is proposed that Tk 8.35 billion will be secured through loans with favourable conditions, while Tk 1.33 billion would be in the form of grants.
"The government is extremely eager to increase tea production as Bangladeshi tea has a good demand in the world market," a senior official of Bangladesh Tea Board (BTB) told the news agency.
He said that the country once earned a good amount of foreign exchange through exporting tea. "But the trend of exporting tea decreased as local consumption increased significantly along with the increase of the total population of the country," he said, adding that Bangladesh is now a net importer of tea.
"We could still earn a good amount of money by exporting the finest quality tea from Bangladesh as the demand for this type of tea is high in the world market," the senior official said.
He also mentioned that for producing the finest tea, the tea gardens of the country need some renovation and modernisation, as specified in the government's roadmap.
Apart from the roadmap, a project titled 'Extension of tea in virgin land of existing tea estates' is up for approval. Under this Tk 2.05 billion project, a total of 440 hectares of land, which are suitable for tea cultivation but not in use at the moment, will be used for tea production.
For protecting the local tea producers, the government has increased the supplementary duty on tea import to 20 per cent from 15 per cent in the fiscal year (FY), 2015-16. The total amount of tea imported in the FY, 2013-14 was 14.3 million kilograms.
The tea industry at present is dependent on the local raw materials.
There are 166 tea gardens in the country where 16,204 labourers and 5,761 officials are employed. Besides, some one million people including the businessmen are directly or indirectly involved in this industry.
The government has taken up various kinds of programmes for the development of the industry.
It would like to tap into its potential for earning foreign exchange as in the past, taking advantage of the fact that tea production has doubled from 31.38 million kgs in 1970 to 63.88 million kgs in 2014, according to the official document.
