AGARTALA / KOLKATA, Sep 17 (TIWN): Tea Board'simplementation of payment module for pan-India tea auctions to help Tripura's tea growers for better pricing across country. The Tea Board of India on Friday said that the payment settlement under Pan India e-auction, which was inaugurated in June, has been implemented successfully in seven auction centres. The introduction of post settlement module from Wednesday has ensured that all payments involving auction of tea would be on-line through Bank of India, the designated settlement bank for payments, it said. Prior to introduction of this system, the auction centres, located at Kolkata, Guwahati, Siliguri, Jalpaiguri, Cochin, Coimbatore and Coonoor, were having separate arrangements with the different banks for processing of payments manually."Since, no end to end integration of the bank system with the auction module was in place, the initiative will make the entire auction process on line starting from pre-sale activities up to issuance of delivery orders to the buyers," said a statement of the Board.The average price realisation after the implementation of the Pan India auction is Rs 143.63 per kg (Sale No.25 to 36) compared to Rs 136.48 per kg for the corresponding sales of the previous year.

With the introduction of the post settlement process, it is expected that the entire transaction of the e-auction of tea becomes more transparent and more and more number of stakeholders use the auction platform to sell tea, the Board said.

In October 2015, the Board has stipulated that 50 percent of tea manufactured in a calendar year will be sold through public auction.

Tripura's Tea Industry is in dilipiated condition as most of the Tea gardens running into losses due tolack of good market prices.