Tea industry stakeholders told to implore value addition

Nkhata Bay, May 25, Mana: Ministry of Trade and Industry has advised stakeholders in Tea Industry in the country to enhance value addition to tea for the product to be competitive and fetch higher value on international markets.

The call was made Saturday at Kawalazi Tea Estate in Nkhata Bay by the responsible Minister, Sosten Gwengwe when he presided over International Tea Day Commemoration on the theme, ‘Honoring women from Crop to Cup.’

He said tea was amongst the four highest forex earners for the country and was a strategic crop as far as forex exchange was concern.

“We need to be increasing value to our tea so that we do better on international markets, besides that, we also have to progressive by establishing out grower tea schemes in place such as Nkhata Bay since we only have small scale growers in Thyolo and Mulanje and we are exploring of increasing growers at Kawalazi,” Gwengwe said.

The Minister added that the country exports raw tea in bulk which was reprocessed elsewhere and imported back as premium brands.

“We would like to process raw tea into our own Malawian Tea premium brands which can fetch higher value hence generating increased forex,” he pointed out.

On trade imbalances, Gwengwe said the country needs to term its imports and find import substitutions so that Malawian products are bought using Malawi Kwacha.

“For example, we continue importing more cement for no reason and using Control of Goods Act, the Ministry is trying to control importation of things which can locally be produced such as matches, tomatoes and sugar among others that can achieve us import substitution,

We should not be importing sugar because we a sugar sufficient country. If we achieve import substitution, then we can achieve trade balance due reduced imports. This can also be attained by increasing our exports,” he added.

Board Chairperson for Tea Association of Malawi, Sangwani Hara said the day’s theme was chosen Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) because women across the world tea across the world is mostly produced by women either as small holder farmers or workers

“For instance in Malawi alone. Sixty-five percent of the 23000 tea smallholder farmers are actually women so it’s a very befitting theme,” he said.

On issues of encroachment into Kawalazi Estate jurisdictions by surrounding communities, Hara said the estate was entitled to the land but it was unfortunate that watersheds and catchment areas are being encroached thereby breaching Malawi’s Land Rights and ecosystem which are violations of the estate’s requirement to export its tea.

“I would like to appeal to authorities including traditional leaders to see to it that these issues are addressed using win-win solutions,” Hara cited.

Chairperson for National Small Holder Tea Growers Association, Jones Muhilima appealed to government to consider linking small holder tea growers to markets as currently they sell their produce to tea estates.

He commended government for supporting about 8,500 small holder tea growers through Agriculture Commercialization Project as he asked for the assistance to be extended to more farmers.

Malawi produces about 45 to 50 million kilogrammes of tea out of which Kawalazi produces about 3.3 to 3.5 million kilogrammes.

International Tea Day is commemorated on May 21, annually but this year, Malawi celebrated the day on May 25.