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| Thursday, 22 January 2004 |
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Iran to buy Lanka tea again The Iranian Government is considering to buy tea from Sri Lanka again, Plantation Industries Minister Lakshman Kiriella said. The Minister said that he had a long discussion in this regard with the members of the visiting Iranian delegation at his ministry yesterday. The Iranian Government has taken this decision after inferior quality tea had been smuggled to the country along land routes via Turkey, Iraq and Syria. Members of the visiting delation and the ministry delegation stressed the need of re-introducing the tea trade between the two countries as this smuggling would seriously affect the trade as well as the health of tea consumers. Iran has a 60 million population and the country needs 110,000 mts annually. Iran produces 60,000 mts and the balance was imported from India, Indonesia, Kenya and Sri Lanka. Later, Minister Kiriella instructed the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Tea Board to mobilise state and private sector tea facilitators to use Lanka's know-how to produce quality tea and form a partnership with Iran to export quality tea to Iran. Meanwhile, visiting delegation members said that preliminary steps have already been taken to set up a tea auction in Teheran. |
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