Uganda, Africa's No 2 coffee exporter, plans to increase coffee exports more than 50 percent in the next five years to meet demand in East Asia, the Middle East and the US specialty market, the country's state-run industry regulator said. The forecast comes as arabica prices have soared to multi-year highs due to concerns about falling output as farmers in Central America battle a devastating leaf disease, known as roya, and farmers in Brazil, the world's top grower, struggle with prolonged drought.
The East African nation is launching a tree planting and replacement campaign to spur production and help exports reach between 5.2 million and 6 million 60-kg bags by the 2019-2020 crop year, Henry Ngabirano, managing director of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority, said in an interview on Friday.
That target would be up around 2 million bags from the current season. Accelerating consumption in China and South Korea in particular will boost demand for Uganda's robusta beans, which are mainly used to make instant coffee, Ngabirano said. Turkey is also an export market of interest. The plan would catapult Uganda ahead of arabica-producing Ethiopia as Africa's No 1 exporter and would consolidate its lead over primarily arabica-producing regional competitors Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda.
"Consumers are looking for more coffee," Ngabirano said, calling natural factors like drought or coffee leaf rusts the lone obstacles to the export goal. "All other things being equal, since there's demand, we think we should get there." The government plans to distribute 300 million seedlings to farmers over the next three years both to expand farms and replace unproductive trees, and will subsidise part of the cost for some producers.
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