Tea production hits two-year high

Tea production hit a two-year high in 2018 thanks to the government's recent move to lower the bank interest rate for the growers and increased replantation activities in the last seven years.

Around 82.13 million kilogrammes of tea was produced in 166 tea gardens across the country last year, much higher from the annual production target of 72.39 million kg, according to Bangladesh Tea Board.

Favourable weather helped growers produce around 85.05 million kg of tea in 2016, the highest in the history of Bangladesh, although it fell to 78.95 million kg in the following year.

Only 19.4 million kg of tea was grown in the six months to June 2018 due to a lack of rainfall while the gardens saw bumper production in the July to December period when a total of 62.7 million kg was grown.

The government has lowered the bank interest rate for the growers by 4 percentage points to 9 percent, which has boosted tea production, said Munir Ahmed, deputy director of Bangladesh Tea Board.

Increasing tea consumption in Bangladesh has also encouraged the tea growers to invest more for expansion of their gardens in the last couple of years, he said.

The weather was not favourable over the year but hard work along with planned expansion projects helped the sector to see bumper production, said Md Shah Alam, president of Bangladesh Tea Association.

“A number of tea growers have expanded tea production areas in their gardens in the last six to seven years,” he said.

“We have also taken many replantation projects where the plants aged over 40 years were replaced with the new ones. This effort has fuelled tea yield in the last couple of years.”

Tea plants generally take six to seven years to reach full production capacity, said Abu Rahat Chowdhury, project director of Chattogram-based New Dantmara Tea Estate in Fatikchhari.

Chowdhury said production in the project's garden on around 350 acres of land rose by around 49 percent to 2.24 lakh kg in the last three years.