Tunisia's exports of olive oil fell 165.6 percent to 96,900 tonnes for the first 11 months of this year as output shrank, official figures showed on Friday.
Olive oil accounts for half the country's agricultural exports, which represent more than 10 percent of its total sales abroad.
More than 500,000 families out of the North African nation's 10 million population benefit from the labour-intensive olive oil industry, with 56 million olive trees covering about 1.5 million hectares.
Government and industry officials said output this season shrank to less than half the 278,000 tonnes harvested last year, mainly due to the previous period's large crop, which took a long time to collect.
That delayed preparations for the current season.
But they said higher olive oil prices abroad because of reduced output in Europe helped mitigate the effect in terms of the value of Tunisia's olive oil exports.
While the volume of its olive oil exports shrank to 96,900 tonnes from 209,200 tonnes in the January-November period last year, the value of exports was at 403.8 million Tunisian dinars ($296.7 million), 42.3 percent less than last year.
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