Upasi to hold e-auctions for tea producers

COONOOR - Enthused by the success of electronic auction centres of the state-run Tea Board, the United Planters’ Association of Southern India (Upasi) plans to launch soon its own platform to conduct e-auctions as a full-fledged commodities exchange.

“We are in the process of setting up an electronic platform here after Tea Board licensed us to set up the Upasi Commodities Exchange Ltd (UCEL) as a registered firm,” Secretary Ullas Menon told IANS here.

The Upasi exchange aims to usher in a reliable mechanism for fair price discovery on the lines of e-auctions conducted at Coonoor and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu and Kochi in Kerala in south India and three other places in Kolkata and Siliguri in West Bengal and Guwahati in Assam.

“The advent of the electronic era has presented an opportunity to create such a system for selling and buying teas online in real time and shift from the decades-old manual system,” Menon said on the margins of the 117th annual conference of Upasi.

Advent of e-auctions has made brokers irrelevant and trading is more transparent than before.

“The e-auction is not only efficient and transparent, but is also secure as only registered users will have access to sell or buy from anywhere and will be to know about concurrent auctions at other centres,” Menon said.

Tea Board has framed a draft e-auction rules and sought views of all stakeholders after the Nilgiris bought leaf manufacturers’ association expressed concerns of produces on the dilutions in the e-auctioning process.

“Since Tea Board is the licensing authority for conduction public auctions, we have sought its directives on the issues governing such auctions.

Producers also have been wary of revealing the identity of bidders, proxy bidding, division of lots, settlement banking and price discovery process.