PESHAWAR, Dec 31: The NWFP government will distribute 800,000 saplings of tea among growers in 2006 and will also provide farmers interest-free loans amounting to Rs60,000, provincial Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Qari Mehmood said on Saturday.

Inaugurating the Tea Research Directorate at Mingora, Swat, the minister said total area over which tea was cultivated in the Frontier province was over 1,500 acres, adding the government was committed to increase the cultivated area to save foreign exchange.

The minister said the federal government was importing 160,000 tonnes tea annually and spending Rs15 billion on it.

He said tea gardens were being cultivated on an area of 70 acres in Malakand alone, including exhibition plots of over 30 acres at the tea research centres at Dir, Shangla and Swat.

In the second phase, he said tea mills would be set up. — APP