Maran gave this assurance to a delegation of plantation associations ofsouthern India led by Dhananjaya Kumar, minister of state for finance, at ameeting in Delhi on Wednesday.

The delegation included MPs from the affected states - CP Radhakrishnan,Ramesh Chennithala, DC Srikantappa, PC Thomas, Mathan J Chitharanjan, CKuppuswami, C Krishnan and Jayaprada. Trade union leaders representing thefive major plantation labour unions of the south were also present.

The delegation apprised the minister of the crisis situation facing the teaindustry in the south owing to a fall in prices and the burden of taxation.It urged the government to provide immediate relief to the industry throughabolition of excise duty on tea and further reduction of sales tax to twoper cent by the state governments as had already been done in West Bengaland Assam.

Expressing concern over the likely adverse impact of the import of tea fromSri Lanka allowed under the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement, the delegationsuggested that a better and long-term approach would be to evolve a jointpromotional campaign to target overseas markets rather than the twocountries vying with each other to export tea from one to the other.

Maran informed the delegation that even Sri Lanka was open to exploring sucha possibility and in fact Sri Lanka, Kenya and India together could dominatethe entire world market for tea. Further allaying fears regarding imports,he informed that as on date no tea had come from Sri Lanka under the FreeTrade Agreement.

Dhananjaya Kumar said that with the recent hike in import duty, there was nopossibility of imports adversely affecting the domestic sector.

In response to a suggestion by the delegation for renegotiation of boundrates of tariff for tea and coffee, it was explained that no suchnegotiations specific to the plantation sector were taking place in theWTO.

Regarding coffee, the delegation urged the minister to expeditiously clearthe coffee promotion scheme drawn up by the Coffee Board which includedsetting up of a logo, certification of curing houses etc and amending theprovisions of the Coffee Act to facilitate operationalisation of the scheme.The delegation also urged the government to support a proposal of ACPC-theglobal body of coffee producers-for a retention price scheme to ensure pricestablisation.

The southern states account for nearly 25 per cent of the country's totaltea production employing 2.5 lakh workers and contribute Rs 800 crore worthof foreign exchange annually. Tamil Nadu alone accounts for about 11 percent of the area and 15 per cent of total tea production.