A Pakistan tea delegation, which is here on a three-day visit, urged the tea sector to improve the quality of the product exported to Pakistan from south India.
Mohammad Hanif Janoo, chairman of the Pakistan Tea Association, told reporters here on Friday that Pakistan imported 24 million kg of tea from India in 2011.
Pakistan was a heavy tea consumer. Its main supply was from Kenya and East Africa. The next was south India (11 per cent).
During the last three years, the quantity of tea imported by Pakistan had gone up, though the average prices had come down. It was not because the market has crashed. There was a downtrend in quality. “We want the good tea from here into our market,” he said.
S. Ahmed Khwaja, vice chairman of the Pakistan Tea Association, said the volume of higher quality tea exported from here should go up.
R. Ambalavanan, executive director of Tea Board, said the Tea Board and the UPASI were working on quality.
