Coffee board looks east in drive to access new markets

Dar es Salaam. Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB) plans to start marketing the country’s coffee to China, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia as it seeks to get markets for the product.

Coffee is one of Tanzania’s seven traditional exports with Bank of Tanzania (BoT) figures putting the crop’s export earnings at $162 million in 2015, a massive improvement from $121 million in 2014, thanks to increased production volumes and unit prices.

This was necessitated by a 17.8 per cent improvement in export volume as well as a 13.3 per cent increase in price.

Some 51,900 tonnes of coffee were exported in 2015, up from 44,100 tonnes in 2014 while price rose from $2,756.2 per tonne to $3,123 per tonne during the same period.

Coffee was only third from tobacco and cashew nuts which brought $286 million and $218 million respectively.

The TCB acting director general, Mr Primus Kimaryo said in Dar es Salaam yesterday that demand for Tanzania’s coffee in China, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia is high, forcing the board to consider marketing the product there.

Currently, 93 per cent of Tanzania’s coffee is exported to Japan and Europe while only seven per cent is sold locally.

“Though the sector, just like other agricultural-based subsectors face a challenge of climate change, we also have not yet utilised it to the maximum since we can be able to export to other countries in the world,” he told a parliamentary Public Investment Committee in the city yesterday.

The improvement in production, according to Mr Kimaryo, is largely due to the fact that the number of regions that engage in coffee production has also increased, with Morogoro, Tanga, Rukwa and Mara now farming the crop.