Kenya's Tea Production Advances 61% as Wet Weather Ends a Two-Year Drought

Tea production in Kenya, the world’s biggest grower of black tea, rose 61 percent in the year to May after wet weather this year ended an almost two-year drought.

Output of the leaf increased to 183,197 metric tons in the five months to May compared with 113,946 tons a year earlier, the Nairobi-based Kenya National Bureau of Statistics said on its website yesterday. The average price of tea per kilogram (2.2 pounds) was 198.56 shillings ($2.48) in May compared with 194.33 shillings the same month a year earlier, according to the report.

Kenya’s coffee sales in the six months ending June fell 40 percent to 23,062 metric tons compared with the same period a year earlier, the bureau said, without giving a reason. Earnings from horticultural exports dropped 25.2 percent to 19.5 billion shillings in the half year to June, it said.

The decline in Kenya’s horticultural sales followed the cancellation of Europe-bound flights for six days in April, when an Icelandic volcano closed European airspace, as well as the European debt crisis, Nairobi-based Sterling Investment Bank Ltd. said in an e-mailed note to clients today. European nations buy 82 percent of the flowers, vegetables and fruits produced by Kenya, Sterling said in the note.

Horticulture is Kenya’s biggest foreign-exchange earner, followed by tea and tourism.

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah McGregor in Nairobi at smcgregor5@bloomberg.net.

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