Excessive import of Kenyan Tea might doom Assam’s tea industry: MLA Mrinal Saikia raises alarm

BJP MLA Mrinal Saikia has raised alarm over the growing import of Kenyan tea into India, warning that the trend poses a grave threat to Assam’s century-old tea industry.

Taking to microblogging site X on August 24, Saikia cautioned that unless steps are taken to regulate the excessive inflow of low-cost Kenyan tea, the Assamese tea sector may be pushed towards collapse.

“If steps are not taken to curb the excessive import of Kenyan tea, the Assam tea industry faces the risk of collapse,” Saikia wrote in his post.

India, the world’s second-largest tea producer, enjoys a strong global market reputation, with Assam tea being a significant contributor to this success. However, according to Saikia, the unchecked imports of low-grade and cheaper Kenyan tea are undermining the market for authentic Assam produce.


Data shared by Mrinal Saikia states that India has imported 45 per cent more tea from Kenya this year, even as Assam’s warehouses are overflowing with unsold stock and auction prices collapse. For the state’s 1.33 lakh Small Tea Growers (STGs), who produce 55 per cent of Assam’s tea and employ nearly a million people, the contradiction is brutal. Prices of raw green leaf have already dipped below Rs12–14 per kg, and the Kenyan influx threatens to push them further down.

Reports indicate that over 300 companies, including leading firms such as Tata and Hindustan Unilever, are importing low-priced Kenyan tea. These imports are then blended with high-quality Assam tea before being re-exported abroad and circulated in domestic markets. This practice, Saikia argued, has eroded both the demand and the value of genuine Assam tea.

The decline in tea prices has hit not only the state’s established tea estates but also thousands of small growers. Both green leaf rates and processed tea prices have sharply fallen, intensifying the financial distress in the sector.

Highlighting the broader socio-economic impact, Saikia stressed that lakhs of people are directly dependent on Assam’s tea industry from large estate workers to smallholder cultivators. He further warned that unless the government reviews and revises the current tariff-free import policy, “the death knell for Assam tea seems almost certain.”