Burundi’s tea export revenues rose 32 per cent in September compared with a year earlier with a rise in both sales volumes and prices, a tea board official said on Monday.The state-run tea board (OTB) said it earned US$2.01 million from the export of 607,185 kg, up from US$1.52 million a year earlier on the sale of 541,530 kg.“Drought was less severe in most tea growing areas compared to last year. This is why we got a high quantity of tea for export in September,” said OTB’s export official, Joseph Marc Ndahigeze.“The market was also better following low supply of the commodity in the region,” he told Reuters.Landlocked Burundi exports 80 percent of its tea through a weekly regional auction held in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa.Ndahigeze said the year-on-year export average price per kilogram climbed to US$3.31 up from US$2.81.Tea is the country’s second-largest hard currency earner after coffee and employs some 300,000 smallholder farmers in a nation of 8 million people.Tea revenues reached US$22.2 million in 2011 up from US$18.2 million in 2010.
