Tea Board deputy chairman Arun Kr Ray on Monday said the auction systems across the country at six centres are self-sustaining and the cheapest among other e-commerce platforms.

Ray’s comments came in the light of Tea Board chairman P.K. Bezbaruah’s recent comments that it was time for the statutory body to disassociate itself from the functioning of the auction system and just remain a licence provider.

Bezbaruah had also suggested that the running of the system should be in the hands of financially capable private parties and not the Tea Board.

“We charge a total of six paise per kilo from the sellers, traders and buyers for running the auctioning platform. At this price point, it is the cheapest platform and also self-sustaining in nature,” Ray told PTI.

He said, “There is no cost to the Tea Board and the sellers are coming voluntarily.”

The software for the auction platform has been developed by NSE.IT.

“We have moved the auction platform to the cloud,” he added. Ray said, “If the Tea Board withdraws from the auctioning system, then no private player will be able to run this kind of platform at this price point, that too based on cloud technology, and the entire system will collapse”.

IIM (Bangalore) has been consulted to make the auction platform more robust, he said.

Around 47 per cent of the tea produced comes to the auctions at six centres in Calcutta, Guwahati, Siliguri, Coimbatore, Coonoor and Kochi.