Kolkata: The Indian Tea industry's (ITA) effort to make inroads into the Pakistan market through better personal relations has received a temporary setback as Islamabad has refused to grant visas to a 14-member tea delegation.

The apex Indian Tea Association was planning to lead a delegation to Pakistan from April eight and had applied for visas last month.

"We have not been issued visas and hence are forced to defer the planned visit to May 17th," ITA Chairman C K Dhanuka said.

Dhanuka said that they have been told that Pakistan's Interior Ministry had refused to grant the visas.

He said, providing that the delegation received visas it would hopefully be able to visit Pakistan from May 17.

The delegation was part of the tea industry's efforts to improve trade between the two country's following thaw in relations, which had made possible a full-fledged cricket match series.

The refusal of visa to the tea delegation came within a few days of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf's statement that he would opt out of ongoing peace initiative if there was no forward movement on the Kashmir issue.

This could have been the second high-level delegation, since the first in August last year.

During the earlier visit, ITA had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Pakistan Tea Association which had agreed to lift 10 million kg of tea annually from India.

The MoU had resulted in increased export of Indian tea to about 6.4 million kg from a low of 3 million kg in 2002 to Pakistan during January-December 2003.

"There was about one million kg of export in January this year to Pakistan and we hope that during the financial year 2003-04, there will be significant increase in total exports," ITA secretary Monojit Dasgupta said.

A Pakistani newspaper had reported that there was an over 117 per cent increase in import of tea from India during the period April, 2003 to February, 2004.

Commenting on the delegation, Dhanuka said that it was a kind of regular visit. "It is a normal thing to visit countries which have tremendous market potential as this will improve our prospect. We will meet buyers there through buyer-seller meets to further increase exports to Pakistan."

Pakistan was currently importing a huge quantity of tea from Kenya and Sri Lanka despite consumers there preferring Indian tea, particularly CTC categories.