Addis Ababa, December 29 (WIC) – The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD) said efforts are being made to earn more than 892 million USD from coffee export this budget year.

Ministry Public Relations Head, Tarekegn Tsige, told WIC the stated revenue would be obtained by supplying close to 320,000 tonnes of coffee to foreign markets.   

He said coffee production is likely to increase this budget year as new coffee trees began yielding beans and due to the current favorable weather conditions.     

He said some 128 million USD has so far been earned from 46,620 tonnes of coffee exported to Germany, Saudi Arabia, Italy, USA, Japan and the Middle East countries over the past four month.   

He said 3.4 million USD of the revenue was obtained from 900 tonnes of coffee exported to Japan. Coffee exported to Japan in the reported period surpasses that of same period last budget year by 110 per cent.

He attributed the increase to the prime attention paid to coffee quality and efforts made to meet Japanese coffee market demand.

Activities are also underway to expand modern coffee laboratories as well as high quality and disease resistant coffee varieties to boost export earnings from coffee, he indicated.   

According to Tarekegn, coffee production this budget year is estimated to be 66 per cent more than that of last budget year.