Price behaviour of Indian tea- A time series analysis

Abstract

Tea is the most important beverage crop in India. Price fluctuation is a major problem faced by tea planters in India. Price behaviour of tea in North India, South India,and All India were analysed by decomposing the monthly average auction prices of tea from January 1980 to December 2020 collected from the Tea Board of India. Time series components viz., trend, seasonal variation, cyclic variation, and irregular variation were estimated for all the prices. Overall increasing trends and prominent seasonal variations were observed for North India and South India tea prices. No visible cyclic variation was observed in South India and North India tea prices. Seasonal indices were computed to study the within year price pattern and it was observed that, for North India, highest price is in June and lowest in March. For South India, the highest price is observed in February and the lowest price is in July. All India tea price was found to be the simple average of North India and South India tea prices and thus could not provide much information.