Nepali Economics

Giribandhu Tea Estate in Birtamod, Jhapa, along Mahendra East-West Highway

By Prajwal Shrestha     Today, Birtamod, a junction in the Mahendra East-West Highway, has become a business hub for Jhapa, Ilam, Kakarvitta and then West Bengal, India and all the western parts of Nepal. The Giribandhu Tea Estate, producing CTC dust tea, is now located inside the Birtamod city. It has already been encircled by the expanded city area and now become useless. The tea garden owners want to shift the plant to the remote hill areas by developing the garden occupied area as a modern town. The market price of the CTC dust tea is very cheap compared to the organic orthodox tea. The international market and the international price of orthodox tea is very high compared to the CTC tea. If the tea garden is shifted to the remote hills, the plant can produce orthodox tea with infrastructural development of the remote hills and also providing employment opportunities to the local people as tea gardening is labour intensive farming. After the government amended the law on the maximum land ceiling for the industries and farmhouses by giving the facility to shift the plant to the remote part by disposing of the land in a prime location, some ill-intentioned people have objected to the idea. They have tried to create different legal hurdles against such a plan of the government. The fact is that the production cost of the CTC tea is very high which cannot compete in the market and the owner has already stopped tea production. To note, in 1993, when the existing law had not described disposing of such a land, 50 bighas of land was disposed of by the owner. Today, when the law has allowed for shifting the plant, hurdles have been created. Will such obstacles help to attract investment in the country?