BUJUMBURA (Reuters) - Burundi’s revenues from its tea exports fell 6 percent in the first nine months to September from the same period a year ago due to higher volumes of the commodity on the global market, a tea board official said on Friday. Tea is Burundi's largest hard currency earner after coffee and supports some 300,000 smallholder farmers in the landlocked country of nearly 10 million people. The country’s state-run tea board (OTB), earnings dropped to $16.7 million in the period, while export volumes rose 5.2 percent to 7,743,972 kg from last year. “Overall earnings as well as the export price for Burundi’s tea dipped due to high quantities of tea available on the regional market, especially higher volumes from Kenya,” said OTB’s export official, Joseph Marc Ndahigeze. Kenya is the top tea producer in the East African region, as well as the world's leading exporter of black tea. Revenues from tea exports by Kenya have tumbled during the 2013/14 financial year due to a global glut of the commodity. [ID:nL6N0RI29Q] Burundi sells 80 percent of its tea through a regional weekly auction held in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa. The average export price per kg for Burundi’s tea declined to $2.16 in the nine months to September from $2.42, the tea board said in its report. In 2013, revenue from the commodity dropped to $20.8 million from $26.3 million in 2012, due to weaker global prices. (Reporting by Patrick Nduwimana; Editing by James Macharia)