By IANS,
Kolkata : The government will review all incentive schemes of the Tea Board of India to monitor their effectiveness, a top board official said here Saturday.
“The Planning Commission has called for a mid-term assessment of all the existing schemes managed by the board and a meeting has been called next month,” Tea Board chairman Basudeb Banerjee said while addressing the annual general meeting of the Indian Tea Association.
He added that the government was “unhappy” with the performance of the Rs.4,800 crore Special Purpose Tea Fund, which is in operation since January 2007.
The fund has been set up to help tea planters to uproot old tea bushes and plant new ones. This plantation process would help in improving tea yield and quality of leaves as well.
“Till date, about 50 percent of the planters have sought to avail assistance from the fund whereas our aim was to achieve much more,” Banerjee said.
The scheme would play a key role in raising the tea output in the country as productivity is expected to go up from 1,700 kg/hectare now to 3,000 kg/hectare over 10 years, he said.
The Tea Board, Banerjee said, has appointed market research firm AC Nielsen to study the effectiveness of incentive schemes for the production of quality orthodox tea leaves.