Ethiopia earned 866 million USD exporting 221,000 tons of coffee during its last fiscal year.
According to Ethiopian Coffee & Tea Development and Marketing Authority, it has accomplished 92 per cent of its set goal to increase coffee exports. ” It is a very great achievement compared to nation’s previous years’ coffee export performance.”
Comparing to the coffee export volumes of 2015/16, there had been 11.5 per cent growth in the coffee exports during the just concluded fiscal year 2016-17. Plus the foreign earning from coffee has raised by 20 percent due to the global coffee price hikes .
In a recent interview with State owned ‘The Ethiopian Herald’, Market Development and Promotion Directorate Director Dassa Daniso said: “Ethiopian Coffee has been imported to over 60 countries. But, this year, 57 countries have imported our coffee, particularly, 86 per cent ofthe total coffee exports destined for Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, USA, Belgium, Sudan, South Korea, among others.” Adding that Germany alone had imported 18 per cent of the coffee.
So far, the country has not become competent enough to export value added coffee as the former coffee quality control and marketing proclamation did not allow exporting of roasted coffee, he noted. However, the director said the new improved coffee quality control and marketing proclamation has been endorsed to allow the country to begin exporting roasted coffee.
The Ethiopian government has given due emphasis in attracting coffee investors by providing various incentives like cheap agricultural land, facilitating bank loans with low interest rates, 10 years tax holidays, allowing importation of tax free machineries, among others.
However, prolonged marketing chain process, illegal coffee trading among other are still bottlenecks facing coffee export market.
