Hyderabad: Iraq has emerged as the largest buyer of Indian tea in the calendar year 2023, according to figures released by Tea Board of India for the period January – November of 2023. The Middle East country has bought 33 millon kg of teas from India. However, exports of tea to Iran, the largest buyer of Indian premium tea, has dwindled as Sri Lanka is exporting teas to Iran under a barter trade agreement which helps Sri Lanka to clear off its dues to Iran against purchase of oil.
The overall exports of tea from India in the first 11 months of 2023 has dipped marginally by 1.7 per cent to 207.14 million kg of teas in the period between as compared to 209.60 million kg in the same period of last year. However Indian tea exporters have been able to penetrate more into the China, Iraq, and Egypt markets, which are comparatively newer markets to Indian tea exporters.
Talking to ETV Bharat, Mohit Agarwal, director of Asian Tea, a tea exporting firm said “Indian tea exports would have crossed last year’s mark, had we been able to export more teas to Iran, our biggest orthodox tea buyer. Even Russia too has bought lesser teas this year.” Iran imported 5.16 million kg of tea in 2023 as against 21 million kg in 2022, a decline of 75 per cent.
Russia too has bought lesser tea from India. As against 38 million kg imported in 2022, Russia has bought 28 million kgs of tea from India in 2023.
Agarwal said that the decline in exports to Iran has been mainly due to two reasons. “Firstly, there was some fraudulent activities by one of the Indian tea exporters which had irked the Iranian government. And secondly, which is the most important one is the implementation of the barter agreement between Sri Lanka and Iran.”