GM tea: The need of the hour to reclaim India's leading position in the global tea market

摘要

Indiahad been the top tea producing nation for over a century,but relinquished that position to China in 2004.After domination of the global tea market for about 170 years,India now faces rising competition,which it has not been able to combat well and has thus slipped to fourth position.There has been a particularly sharp decline in India's market share in the global tea export since the late 1980s as evidenced from the steady wane of 20.86% in 1986 to 12.34% in 2008.Also,there is an excess supply but not sufficient demand for Indian tea to boost profit percentage.2,3 Countries which had been long-standing customers of Indian tea like USSR and UK have drastically reduced import of tea from India,while tea production in India grew by about 250% since 1947 (255 million kg) and in 2007 (950 million kg).4 India's tea production increased at a 3-year annual average of 0.3 per cent to 988 million kg in 2011.The global oversupply of tea increased from 78,000 tonnes in 2010 to 111,000 tonnes in 2011 while the annual consumption of 4,300 million kg was predicted in 2012-this indicated an extremely small cushion against potential supply disruption.