Government to set up tea museum in Darjeeling

In order to support tea production and export, the government is going to set up a tea museum at the hill town of Darjeeling and a tea park at commercial centre Siliguri in West Bengal.

'The tea museum will be set up to showcase the development of the tea industry in India over the last two centuries,' Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh told the Lok Sabha Tuesday.

'The tea park will be the central place for meeting all service requirements of the tea industry including warehousing, packaging and blending of teas,' Ramesh added.

Apart from this, he said the government will also set up a centre of excellence at Kurseong, which will serve as a one-point stop for information relating to all aspects of tea production, tea marketing and intellectual property rights issues.

All three units will be set up during the ongoing 11th Plan period that ends in 2012.

India, it is estimated, will produce around 980 million kg of tea in the current fiscal.

Private sector tea major Tata Tea has set up a tea museum in Kerala that showcases teas from plantations in Munnar.