Abstract

Author:
Damodar Gautam, Sushant Poudel

Doi: 10.26480/mbmj.02.2022.53.58

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Along with significant contribution in livelihood of smallholder farmers, Nepalese tea is one of the potential sectors for foreign trade. This study aims to depict the possible forthcoming scenario on production, marketing and trade of Nepalese tea sector with thorough analysis of existing condition. Problem identification and ranking was done by household survey of 130 samples selected randomly from Suryodaya municipality and Rong gaupalika of Illam district while trend analysis was done for the secondary data collected from secondary sources. Study revealed that, Jhapa and Illam district shares almost 86% of total area cultivation and 99% of total national production. India is the major niche market for Nepalese tea trade contributing almost 96.7% of total national export and almost 90.6% of total import. Up to the year 2018/19, area, production and export of Nepalese tea was increasing but in the year 2019/20, sudden significant decrease is realized which was mainly because of border restriction due to COVID situation. Considering the socio-economic effects that could arise just because of poor performance of this sector, Presently, Government support on input supply, technical facilitation to the smallholder farmers, reasonable price fixation, inclusion of value addition, certification and trademark for Nepalese tea, strengthening of tea cooperative and companies, long term abolition of barriers in trade with India are the major addressing issues for the sustainable growth and development of tea sector in Nepal.