Tea producers, traders, auctioneers and brokers have been in hectic parleys with the Tea Board to request the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, for a preliminary report by next month.

The IIMC, which has been commissioned to study and review the auction rules and norms, had said it will not be able to begin its study before December because of prior commitments. The IIMC had also indicated that it will take around three months to complete the study and some more time to submit the report.

The tea industry is perturbed about facing another season with the high costs imposed by the mandatory distribution of free trade samples, which have to be given to buyers in accordance with the Tea (marketing) Control Order of 1984, depending on minimum purchase qualification.

The industry has recommended strongly that theIIMC should focus on the FTS issue first and submit an interim report by end-December. According to the Indian Tea Association, the distribution of FTS has risen to an alarming level, imposing a total cost of Rs 22 crore on the Calcutta, Siliguri and Guwahati auctions.

An the 110th annual general meeting of the Calcutta Tea Traders Association earlier this month, Chairperson Afroze Randerian also expressed grave concern about the excess distribution of FTS and sought immediate corective action.

The industry feels that the free samples are an imposed cost on the sellers/ producers and induces sellers to bypass the auction system.

The final report of the Ahuja committee on auction rules, which came into effect from April 28, 1986, had recommended that the FTS rules by modified to encourage only genuine and regular buyers.

The Ahuja report had stated clearly that issuance of free trade samples cannot be claimed as a matter of right. "But this is obviously a very important means towards wider and healthymarketing in the auction system," the report had said.

"The free trade samples should be worked out and applied in a manner that emcourages genuine, regular and energetic buyers and discourages frivolous and/or casual buying," the report had said.

According to industry officials, there is an in-built defect in the qualifying percentages for FTS. There are three sizes of the samples, depending on the sizes of the purchases themselves. For buyers of small quantities (those who pick up 0.20 to 0.399 per cent of the total CTC sold in a year), the specfied sample size is 30gm.

Medium buyers - 0.40 to 0.99 per cent - are eligible to get samples of 60gm, while buyers accounting for one per cent and above are entitled to FTS of 90gm.

Overall, all buyers meeting the minimum percentage are eligible to get one sample from all lots of CTC tea. Orthodox, dust and Darjeeling teas have separate percentage norms.

One auctioneer said this prompts some buyers to spread their purchases over two or more companies sothat they get more free samples.

The ITA has also observed that some buyers, after fulfiling the minimum quantity of buying to be eligible for FTS, operate on behalf of sister/ group companies thereby picking up more samples.

"Although the total quantity of tea sold at any centre in a year remains almost the same, the number of buyers eligible for FTS has progressively increased," the ITA observed.

To check these anomalies, ITA has suggested that all auction committees be given over-riding powers to grant or withhold FTS to any buyer.

In case of CTC, there are two sizes of lots called small and large lots with small 5.8kg of teas drawn from the small lots and 9.2kg drawn from the large lots.

According to CTTA's Randerian, the number of samples distributed to eligible buyers by brokers at the Calcutta auction only amount to over 16 million packets in a year and over 3 lakh packets a week.