Sri Lanka’s oldest Colombo Tea Auction now online amid COVID-19 pandemic

Colombo: The bang of the auctioneer’s gavel has been replaced with the click of a button, as Sri Lanka’s 126-year old Colombo Tea Auction has moved online amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over 16.5 million kg of tea were sold at Sri Lanka’s first three e-auctions between April 4-19, allowing the country’s tea export industry worth $1.5 billion to continue during a nationwide curfew imposed to contain the pandemic, reports Xinhua news agency.

Negotiations to digitize tea auctions have been ongoing for 20 years, but it was the pandemic that finally catalyzed the shift, Jayantha Karunaratne, chairman of the Colombo Tea Traders’ Association, said on Monday.

As the island-wide curfew declared on March 20 made it impossible to hold physical tea auctions, an e-auction platform developed by local software company CICRA Solutions amassed a register of over 300 buyers and eight tea brokers for its first e-auction on April 4. “The Colombo Tea Auction is a 126-year-old institution, so changing the mindset of some players is not an easy task. Our vision is to go online because it provides advantages such as lower cost, greater efficiency, and more transparency,” Karunaratne said. (IANS)

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