Burundi’s tea export revenues rose 11 percent in the first nine months of 2012 to the end September compared with the same period in 2011, helped by high sales volumes and by high prices on the regional market, a tea board official said on Wednesday.
The state-run tea board OTB said it earned $20.5 million from the export of 6,892,175 kg, up from $18.5 million earned between January and September last year from the sale of 6,522,271 kg.
«We exported a high quantity of tea over the last nine months of the year due to a good harvest of tea leaves,» OTB export official Joseph Marc Ndahigeze said.
«A shortfall in volumes of the Kenyan tea in the first half of the year has also contributed to boost prices,» he said. Kenya is East Africa’s biggest tea producer.
Ndahigeze said the overall export average price per kg rose to $2.98 from $2.84 in 2011.
Burundi exports 80 percent of its tea through a regional weekly auction held in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
Revenues from the commodity reached $22.2 million in full year 2011 up from $18.2 million in 2010.
Tea is the country’s second largest foreign exchange earner after coffee and supports some 300,000 smallholder farmers in a nation of 8 million people.
Source: reuters.com/article/2012/10/31/burundi-tea-idUSL5E8LV6T420121031
