ACCORDING to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, tea imports in July-February 2021-22 were recorded at $423.466 million against imports worth $379.314 million during the same timeframe in the preceding year, showing a substantial increase in the consumption of what clearly happens to be a non-essential commodity.

Tea is a very popular beverage in Pakistan and a significant portion of our population is addicted to it. I personally know people who take 25-30 cups of tea every day. Trust me, they do. As inflation grew manifold in recent months, the price of tea has also skyrocketed, and the import bill has seriously increased compared to the same period in 2021.

Historically, there was no tea cultivation in Pakistan in the past and the country was solely dependent on the import of tea leaves from Kenya, Malaysia and Bangladesh.

The domestic cultivation of tea was started in the early 1960s, and a pilot project was launched by the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council that paved the way for the establishment of the National Tea and High-Value Crops Research Institute (NTHRI) at Shinkiari Mansehra for large-scale production and processing of tea leaves in the country.

A processing factory and other infrastructure were established in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa during the 1990s.

However, successive federal and provincial governments did not give due priority to the promotion of tea cultiva-tion, and this important endeavour has not been able to achieve its objective so far.

Munawar Siddiqui
Lahore

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2022