17 February 2008
Addis Abeba — Ethiopia, Africa's top coffee grower, plans to boost production by 20 percent over five years from an estimated 400,000 tonnes in the 2007/08 (July-June) crop year, Reuters news agency reported citing a senior agriculture official as saying on Friday.
"We target in the next five years, if everything is okay, to increase production by 20 percent," Solomon Tilahun, a marketing expert at Ethiopia's Agriculture Ministry, told the news agency on the sidelines of a regional coffee conference in Uganda.
Solomon said the government was helping farmers with advice on how to care for their trees, as well as inviting people from outside the country to set up plantations.
"We are encouraging foreign investors to invest in our country to increase coffee production," he said.
In a related story the government's statistics agency said on Friday that the country expects an overall harvest of 16.5 million tonnes in the current 2007/08 season thanks to good weather and a greater number of crops planted.
"The 2007/08 production forecast indicated a 10 percent increase over the previous year," Samia Zakaria, director the Central Statistics Agency, told a news conference.
She said 11.2 million hectares of land were currently planted with crops, an increase of four percent over 2006/07.
Ethiopia produced 330,000 tonnes of beanS during the 2006/07 season. It plans to export 220,000 tonnes worth $500 million in the current crop year, government officials say.
Last year, the Ethiopian authorities won trademark rights for its specialty Harar and Sidamo coffee brands, following a dispute with leading coffee chain Starbucks Corp over the use of the two names in the United States.
Starbucks is in the process of setting up a support centre for farmers in Ethiopia.
Solomon said the government planned to boost quality by increasing its number of liquoring units to eight. It currently has one unit in the capital Addis Ababa, according to the report.
The new ones will be located in Oromia, southern Ethiopia, and in Dire Dawa, in the east of the country.
Solomon added that last month's launch of an Ethiopian commodity exchange would boost coffee trade by cutting transaction costs for farmers, who can now carry a certificate instead of lugging beans to auctions.
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