Bangladesh Tea Industry Data

This article is taken from The Daily Star: http://www.thedailystar.net/business/tk-976cr-plan-liven-tea-industry-1336027

I will just highlight a few points:

The government has prepared a road-map for the tea sector involving Tk 976 crore aiming to boost production, create 30,000 additional permanent jobs and improve the standards of living of workers.

The draft plan, which has been prepared by the commerce ministry, will soon be presented to the high authorities of the government for approval.

Of the sum, Tk 834 crore will be mobilized as loans and the remainder will be grants. The road-map will be implemented from 2016 to 2030.

There are 162 tea gardens in Bangladesh covering 1.14 hectares of land.

Of the gardens, 149 are identified as developing and 13 as sick. At present, tea is grown over 59,018 hectares of land.

Under the short-term plans, the government intends to expand tea cultivation on 2,000 hectares out of 5,868 hectares of land newly available for farming.

Of 10,000 hectares of old or unprofitable tea-growing areas, aged plants on 3,850 hectares would be replaced with new saplings.

The draft said there are well-furnished factories in 96 gardens. 

The machinery of 18 factories is of low-quality. Some 48 gardens do not have any factory.

In 2013, some 390,238 people lived in the gardens. Of them, 202,923 are men and the rest women.

The number of registered workers is 106,204, with 51.44 percent being female. Some 28,313 workers are also employed on a temporary basis.

The draft said tea garden workers are suffering from weak health and malnutrition. Only 23 percent tea gardens have healthcare facilities.

Tea consumption in Bangladesh is increasing by the day, with the annual demand tipped to rise to 129.43 million kilograms in 2025.

At present, 1,270 kg of tea is grown per hectare, with the average usage of tea land being 51.42 percent.

There is scope to increase productivity in the tea industry. Particularly, tea farming can be increased in northern Bangladesh as well as three hilly districts.

Tea production can be raised to 110 million kg by 2025 from 162 gardens by increasing land usage to 55 percent and production to 1,500 kg per hectare, new plantation in very old and economically unprofitable section of gardens and bringing in new areas under tea cultivation.

The roadmap plans to construct 15,000 houses for workers, 15,000 toilets, 40 deep tube-wells and 4,500 hand-driven wells in order to improve the living standards of workers.

An additional 30,000 permanent jobs will be created for at least the next 50 years, according to the draft.  

Now it's time to have a cup if tea . . .