Tea prices to go up by Rs 40 per kg on shortages

Tea will become costlier by Rs 15-20 a kg for the retail consumer from this week. Leading tea companies and retailers have decided to raise the retail prices of tea in two phases, by Rs 15-20 from May 15, to be rounded off with a similar hike in June. This means, tea will be costlier by Rs 30-40 a kg, depending quality, in a space of roughly 40 days.

Such a steep hike in tea prices is attributed to a domestic short supply from poor rains in tea growing areas, coming on the back of a global shortage triggered by crop failures in Kenya and Sri Lanka.

"Prices of green tea leaves have gone up sharply. At the auction centres, prices have already increased by 30% during the current year but local traders have not increased their local prices.

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India-Lanka undersea link project on course

Undeterred by the ongoing war by LTTE, the governments of Sri Lanka and India are going ahead with the implementation of an ambitious Rs 1,000 crore under sea transmission link project between the two countries. As reported by FE on April 13, both the governments have given top priority to this project and are expected to sign an MoU soon, which will pave for an appointment of an agency to carry out a comprehensive undersea/marine survey. The proposed survey is like to be completed in six months and there after, a detail project report will be prepared.

The proposed undersea/marine survey is necessary, prior to the laying of the undersea/submarine cables. The cable survey will look into the traffic of movements of ships in the area, depth of sea, earthquake zones and volcanic actives as well as the presence of sharks in that area of sea. The link is likely to connect Madurai in Tamil Nadu and Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka’s North Central Province. The transmission line is expected to be 400KV HVDC overhead lines from Madurai to the Indian coast (near Rameshwaram(139km), a 400 KV HVDC cable from the Indian sea coast to the Sri Lankan sea coast (39 km), a 400 KV HVDC overhead line from the Sri Lankan coast to Anuradhapura/Putta lam (125km). PowerGrid Corporation,which is India’s central transmission utility, will be the project implementation agency.

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