Tea Board sets 300m kg target this year
Sri Lanka Tea Board (SLTB) expects a target production of 300 million
kilograms this year. It is optimistic about the performance of the
industry.
Tea pluckers |
The industry expects a total revenue of US$ 1.2 billion by the end of
this year, Sri Lanka Tea Board Chairman, Lalith Hettiarachchi told Daily
News Business.
He said that although the Board expected a target production of 300
million kgs last year, due to many reasons such as drought, low
application of fertilizer and labour issues the industry could not meet
its target. “Therefore, the Board had to revise its targets between 290
to 295 million kgs. Even though there was a slight drop in the target
total production last year, the total production recorded a 289.8
million kg despite the difficulties”, he said.
There was a 40 percent drop in tea production in 2009 first quarter
performance compared to 2008 first quarter production.
This was mainly due to the drought. In the second quarter there was a
difference of 24 percent in the production comparatively to 2008 second
quarter production in 2008.
In the third quarter of 2009 the production difference was dropped to
18 percent and in the fourth quarter the disparity of the tea production
dropped further to 9.4 percent compared to 2008 quarterly tea
production, Hettiarachchi said
However, the industry has recorded 25,195,733 million kgs of tea
production during December 2009 while, in 2008 December tea production
recorded 19,480,449 million kgs.
Therefore, compared to the corresponding year there is an increase of
5,715,284 million kgs. As the tea production report of January this year
has not been issued yet, we expect that the production of January will
be a similar figure to the December tea production last year, he said.
The Chairman said the Board expects a growth in the industry this
year with the economic stability.
If tea prices remain at the current pricing scheme it will be easy to
achieve the production targets and the target total revenue for 2010,”
he said. C DE S
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