BUJUMBURA: Burundi's tea export revenues rose 2 percent in June compared with the same period last year, helped by a stronger regional market, a tea board official said on Tuesday.
Tea, the country's second-largest hard currency earner behind coffee, supports 300,000 smallholder farmers in a nation of 8 million people.
The state-run tea board (OTB) said that it collected $2.65 million in June from the export of 860,523kg, up from the previous year's $2.60 million on sales of 934,477kg.
"There were low supplies of the commodity following a fall in overall production of the Kenyan tea, and this drove up prices of Burundi's tea," OTB export official Joseph Marc Ndahigeze said.
Kenya is the top producer in the east African region, and landlocked Burundi exports 80 percent of its tea through a regional weekly auction held in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.
Ndahigeze said that the average export price per kilogram climbed to $3.09 in June, from $2.79 the previous year.
Tea generated $22.2 million in revenues for Burundi in 2011, up from $18.2 million in 2010.
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