SL may miss tea export target: PA

Saturday, 27 October 2018 01:47 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Japanese export costs rise on lack of glyphosate, industry in dark over shipment

By Charumini de Silva

The Planters’ Association (PA) this week said Sri Lanka might miss its projected tea production of 320 million kilos and revenue target of Rs. 260 billion this year due to multiple crises such as the absence of glyphosate, non-access to the Japanese market due to high residue levels in tea and deadlock with the estate worker unions on a wage hike agreement.

Although the Government officially lifted the ban on glyphosate for use in tea and rubber sectors for a period of 36 months in May, the plantation companies are yet to receive the first shipment of glyphosate.

“We have no clue about what is happening to the glyphosate shipment that was supposed to come in mid-August for the industry to be used for the next season. The unavailability of glyphosate caused us great loss and put tea exports into distress,” PA Chairman Sunil Poholiyadde told Daily FT.

He said that authorities had failed to provide a solution to this matter and had left the industry in a major dilemma with no fertiliser for the next season and missing on critical markets like Japan.

The excessive use of MCPA as an alternate weedicide resulted in having high MRL in most high grown and mid grown teas that prompted Japan to introduce strict regulations to monitor import of tea from Sri Lanka. The exporters are now required to get the samples of tea shipments for Japan tested in advance and get the clearance before shipment. This has resulted in the incurring of additional expenses for the exporters.

“Sri Lanka agreed not to use MCPA as a fertiliser as we wanted to protect our Japanese market share. However, nobody has been able to predict how much of MCPA is contained in the tea. Japan is a critical market for us as they only buy the premium quality special varieties, which helps us to determine a higher price for Ceylon Tea at the auctions. But unfortunately we already have lost the Japanese market including many markets in the Middle East and Russian market that absorb around 70% of the Ceylon Tea,” he added.

Sri Lanka earned a highest-ever Rs. 233.3 billion from tea exports in 2017.

In 2015, President Maithripala Sirisena banned glyphosate, fearing it was causing Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) after some researchers published a paper linking glyphosate to the disease, which is prevalent in the North Central Province of the country.

The National Economic Council (NEC) decided to lift the arbitrary ban imposed on glyphosate in March 2018, in light of overwhelming scientific consensus that the substance was not harmful to human health.