Tea left on verbal orders

Mechi Customs Office Chief Ram Prasad Regmi said that after the oral order of the West Bengal Customs Commissioner, random sampling of Nepalese tea has been left as before. "There is no official circular about this," said Regmi, "but there has been a verbal order to leave it for the time being." According to the tea entrepreneurs, the permanent solution will only come after the official circular. According to Ishwarraj Paudel, the Nepali Ambassador-at-Large in Kolkata, India's Ministry of Commerce, New Delhi recently issued a circular to the customs along the border with Nepal and ordered the related customs to import Nepali tea only after 100% inspection.

During the implementation of that order, Nepali tea was stopped across the border. According to him, it seems that in the past too, India has been restricting Nepalese tea in various ways through circulars. In the past, Indian customs used to randomly sample 5-20 percent of Nepalese tea. However, Nepalese tea entrepreneurs were worried because the new circular of the Ministry of Commerce has put the point of 100% testing.

According to Badri Tiwari, Economic Consultant of the Nepali Embassy in Delhi, about 17 tea-carrying trucks that were stopped on their way to India while being exported from Nepal to India were abandoned by the Indian customs. He said, 'Now Nepali tea is exported without any restrictions.' The Embassy in Kolkata informed the Nepali Embassy in Delhi, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Agriculture and Commerce of Nepal about the new problem regarding Nepali tea.

'Our demand was that the old circular should be kept as it is without implementing the new circular immediately,' added Paudel, 'India has continued to import tea in accordance with the immediate verbal order.' It happens. 6 percent is exported from Biratnagar and 2 percent from Birganj.