Storm in a tea cup gets hotter

CTTA says credit should be given where it is due

The storm in the tea cup literally has got hotter with the Ceylon Tea Traders Association (CTTA) yesterday saying that the industry was amused by attempts by many astute commentators, both in the print and electronic media, to diminish its landmark achievement in breaching the elusive US.$.1 billion Value Barrier in the year 2007, for the first time in its 140 years history.

In the official statistics released recently, the value of Tea Exports in 2007 is shown to have recorded a 22% increase over the 2006 figure, by advancing from Rs.91.7 billion to Rs.112 billion; an outstanding performance!

However, CTTA said these detractors are attributing this exceptional performance, not to the efforts of the Industry, but to the repercussions of the problems in Kenya, following the Presidential Elections and its impact on the global tea market. The unrest in Kenya did indeed have some effect on tea prices world-wide. However, its influence on Ceylon Tea was marginal since Kenyan Tea is almost exclusively of CTC manufacture and is a mass market product, whilst Ceylon Tea is overwhelmingly an Orthodox Black Tea and is considered a speciality product catering to the niche market sector.

Most notably, in creating this misconception, these cynics have overlooked the fact that the Kenyan Presidential Elections were held on December 27, 2007 and the results were announced on December 30, 2007. The unrest, which disrupted its tea industry and every aspect of life in that country, only commenced mid-January, 2008. Consequently, the implications of this, with any stretch of imagination, could not have had any effect whatsoever on the exports of Ceylon Tea in the year 2007.

“It is only fair that credit should be given where credit is due and there is no better example of this than the extraordinary scale of Sri Lanka’s Tea Exports in 2007, notwithstanding the most challenging circumstances,” CTTA Chairman Tyeab Akbarally said.