1、 中文 2557 字 外文翻译 原文 Indian Tea Industry Since 1990s Material Source: Social Science Research Network Author: Subhajit Subhajit Sr INTRODUCTION Tea is made from the young leaves and leaf buds of the tea bush Camellia sinensis. Ancient Chinese and Japanese legends refer to a beverage made from an infus
2、ion of dried tea leaves. In 1833, the East India Company, after losing its legal monopoly of the tea trade between China and Britain, began to look for other sources of supply. As a result, the cultivation of tea in India began in 1834, with the planting of wild tea found growing in Assam in 1823. T
3、he tea industry has an important and special place in the Indian economy. Tea is the countrys primary beverage, with almost 85% of total households in the country consuming tea. India is the worlds largest producer and consumer of tea, with India accounting for 27% of the world tea production. India
4、s expenditure on beverages and processed foods accounts for 8% of food expenditure in rural areas, and 15% in urban areas. India is also an important tea exporter, accounting for around 12-13% of world tea exports. Further, certain varieties of tea (for example Darjeeling) are grown only in India an
5、d are in great demand across the world. All Darjeeling teas possess the lightness of flavor and fine coloring that set them apart from all other teas. Indias tea industry exports were estimated at Rs.17.31 billion during FY2006, accounting for 0.4% of Indias exports. In value terms, tea ranks as the
6、 fourth-largest agricultural product export item from India, with exports of around US$410 million in 2004. In terms of employment, the tea industry employs around 1.27 million people at tea plantations, and 2 million people indirectly, of which 50% are women. The last fact is particularly important
7、 when we consider that tea industry, to a large extent, drives the economies of the regions where the tea gardens are concentrated, for example Assam. Tea is the prime beverage consumed in India, and private final consumption expenditure (PFCE) on tea, coffee and cocoa aggregated Rs.134.96 billion i
8、n FY2005, accounting for around 2% of Indias PFCE on food, and 0.7% of Indias PFCE. The latest available data indicates that tea accounts for 90.6% for Indias consumption of stimulants (tea, coffee, and cocoa beans), followed by coffee (7.7%), and cocoa beans (1.7%). Tea plantations in India are mai
9、nly located in rural hills and backward areas of North-eastern and Southern States. Major tea growing areas of the country are concentrated in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The other areas where tea is grown to a small extent are Karnataka, Tripura Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Arunach
10、al Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Bihar and Orissa. Now if we boil down to the manufacturing counterpart of Indian tea industry then we will see that the sector is comparatively small. In fact the tea as an agricultural output earns more money fot the country than as a manuf
11、actured product. But this by no means indicate that tea manufacturing is a nascent concept in India. As we will see that the only player that has crossed the seven seas to promote braded tea in form of Polypacks etc is Tata Tea. But the fact that there are no other major house which has promoted its
12、elf as a tea manufacturing house provides enough scope to the houses themselves to improve their status. But there are some intrinsic problems which we will discuss about in the report. 1 BASIC ISSUES IN TEA PRODUCTION 1） PRODUCTION Now when we say tea production we must be careful about manufacture
13、d tea and unmanufactured tea. Now when we speak of unmanufactured tea we are basically speaking about the tea that we get after fermentation of the tea leafs. In fact this tea is auctioned of and then it is blended so as to get the name manufactured tea. Now this manufactures tea is both packeted an
14、d sold as poly packs or other forms (tea bags, cartons, instant tea etc).But unfortunately if we compare the quantity of unmanufactured tea to that of manufactured we will see that the former is much larger compared to that of the later. In fact tea manufacturing sector contributes very less to the
15、Indian manufacturing sector. Therefore, in this analysis data for manufactured tea was unavailable so what has been reported is production of unmanufactured i.e. black tea. We can use it as a rough estimate of how the tea industry has done actually, as supply of manufactured tea in someway depends u
16、pon the output of black tea. The average growth rate of production of unmanufactured tea since 1992 has been around 1.7% annually. The trend in its growth in production can be understood from the following diagram. The major observations are: Tea production increased 3.9% during CY2005, as compared
17、with a growth of 1.7% during CY2004. The higher increase in tea production during CY2005 was mainly because of significant increase in Assams production, which offset production declines in TN. During 2004, while tea production had declined in Assam because of floods, tea production in TN was affected by drought conditions.
