Oct 3, 2020
There are strong signals and as bad as it could be that the India’s tea production in the current year will crash by the largest decline, on a year-on-year basis.
The production of tea went down drastically due to lockdowns and adverse weather conditions, especially in the North East and West Bengal.
The Tea Board data shows that tea production in the country till August month had fallen by 12.50 million kg (mkg) or 7.26 per cent over August 2019.
This compilation of this data came from various producing regions of India’s tea output in the first eight months of this calendar years which showed declination to 669 mkg from 821.42 mkg in January-August 2019,
This marked a shortfall of 152.42 mkg or 18.56 per cent.
The decline was big in North India, where the plantations were closed for winter till February, and then faced adversities due to the nationwide lockdown to fight against Covid-19. Hence here till August crashed to 533.48 mkg from 684.45 mkg in January-August 2019. This also meant that North India accounted for as much as 150.97 mkg out of the country’s total shortfall of 152.42 mkg in eight months.
In other words, North India lost a 22.06 per cent of its last year’s output in this period.
All the tea-producing regions in the North comprising Assam and West Bengal reported a lower output, but Assam continued to top the country’s production table with 308.92 mkg — down by as much as 106.27 mkg or 25.60 per cent.
While in South Indian output declined marginally to 135.52 mkg from 136.97 mkg in January-August 2019, marking a loss of 1.45 mkg or 1.06 per cent.
So ultimately it is impossible to make good this massive loss of 152.42 mkg in the remaining four months.