TEA INDUSTRY-Time of Reckoning

Time of Reckoning AT a recent meeting with the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, K S Krishnaswamy, and other senior officials of the banking establishment in Calcutta, representatives of the tea industry made an eloquent plea for special sanction of funds by banks to it on easy terms. The thrust of the industry's argument was that the boom that the industry had been enjoying since 1974 was now showing definite signs of petering out, as was reflected in the working results for 1978 which were far from happy. , Another point that the industry brought up was that the norms of bank finnancing for tea companies had virtually remained unchanged since the early 1970s when the guidelines were adopted on the basis of the B K Dutt committee on tea finance, Rules governing overdraft limits and margin requirements being followed since then had become dated, and needed revision.