Burundi tea revenues rise 2.4 pct in 2014 on good weather

Reuters
A truck is loaded with bags of tea leaves at a plantation in Nandi Hills, in Kenya's highlands region west of capital Nairobi, November 5, 2014. REUTERS/Noor Khamis

BUJUMBURA (Reuters) - Burundi’s tea export revenues rose 2.4 percent in 2014 from a year before due to favourable weather that helped increase the harvest of the commodity, it said on Wednesday. Tea is Burundi's second-largest hard currency earner after coffee and supports some 300,000 smallholder producers in the landlocked central African nation of nearly 10 million people. Export earnings rose to $21.3 million from $20.8 million in 2013, while sales jumped to 9,836,296 kg up from 8,696,223 kg, state-run tea board (OTB) said in its report. “Last year, we sold high quantities of tea due to good weather conditions in growing areas, and this helped to boost revenues," said OTB’s export chief, Joseph Marc Ndahigeze. But OTB said the average export price per kg for Burundi’s tea declined to $2.17 from $2.38 the previous year, blaming the fall to a weaker regional market following higher supply of the commodity from neighbouring Kenya, is the top regional producer. Burundi exports 80 percent of its tea through sales at a weekly auction held in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.