The Indian Tea industry's effort to make inroads into the Pakistani market in the background of improving relations received a setback as Islamabad has refused to grant visas to a 14-member tea delegation.
The apex Indian Tea Association was planning to lead a delegation to Pakistan from April 8 and had applied for visas in March.
"Pakistan's interior ministry refused to grant the visas. Hence, we are forced to defer the planned visit to May 17," ITA chairman C K Dhanuka told PTI in Kolkata.
The refusal of visas comes within a few days of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's statement that he would opt out of ongoing peace initiative if there is no forward movement on the Kashmir issue.
This could have been the second high-level delegation, since the first in August 2003 when the ITA had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Pakistan Tea Association, which had agreed to lift 10 million kilograms of tea annually from India.
The MoU had resulted in increase of export of Indian tea to Pakistan to about 6.4 million kg from a low of 3million kg in 2002 during January-December 2003.
"There was about one million kg of export in January 2004 to Pakistan and we hope that during the financial year 2003-04, there will be significant increase in total exports," ITA secretary Monojit Dasgupta said.
Pakistan currently imports a huge quantity of tea from Kenya and Sri Lanka despite consumers preferring Indian tea, particularly CTC categories.