August 20, 2003
ECONOMIC DESK
The government yesterday approved a project named, "Small Holding Tea Cultivation at Chittagong Hill Tracts", to encourage growers to set up small gardens, aiming to give a further boost to the country’s tea output as well as gear up economic activities in the region.
A high-level meeting was held at the Ministry of Commerce. Commerce Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury in the chair. The meeting approved the project involving Tk 4.92 crore to be financed by Overseas Development Assistance both in terms of grants and soft-term loans.
Of the total project cost, Tk 3.18 crore will be distributed among the planters as loans for preparing the gardens. The loans will be interest-free for the first seven years, but the borrowers will have to pay one per cent service charge annually. After the seven-year grace period, the borrowers will have to pay 5 per cent interest.
Officials said the rest of the project money would be spent on training and supply of tea saplings and farm equipment. A tea research institute will also be set up at Ghagra in Rangamati district.
Tea Board Chairman Brig Gen SAHM Towhid and representatives from Ministries of Finance, Establishment, Environment and Forest, and Bangladesh Bank were present at the meeting.
In the first phase, some 300 acres of land ? 100 acres each in Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban districts ? will be brought under a pilot project for such small gardens in the Hill Tracts where the land appear to be suitable for tea production.
The project will come for implementation from next month with distribution of about 15-20 lakh saplings in the first phase which will be increased to a total of 85 lakh saplings in three phases, meeting sources said. The project is expected to generate self-employment for about 7,000 to 10,000 people and gear up economic activities in the three districts. "We also want to raise the country’s tea output," said an official.
Tea is one of the country’s major export items, but its domestic consumption is growing at 3.5 per cent per annum although production growth has been only around 1 per cent a year.
"If the trend continues, the country is likely to have no exportable tea by 2015 and we may have to go for import at some stage," said the official.
The country’s annual tea production is about 56 million kgs from 50,470 hectres of land now under cultivation against a consumption of 35-40 million kgs.
Experts believe that small tea gardens can be developed on some 49,000 acres of land in the three CHT districts.