Sri Lankan tea output to outstrip Kenya
COLOMBO: Sri Lanka's tea output will likely hit a record 325-330
million kg in 2006, its tea board said on Friday, with both production
and export seen likely to outstrip drought-hit rival producer Kenya.
Sri Lanka Tea Board Director General H. D. Hemaratne said small
growers, who produce 62 per cent of the total crop, were expanding, and
that the island would therefore likely become both a larger producer and
exporter than Kenya in 2006.
"Kenya has a problem due to drought," he told Reuters in a telephone
interview. "We will be higher than Kenya... I think it will happen.
Here, our production is rising.
But we are not going for volume, we are going for quality." Tea makes
up some 13 per cent of the island's export income, and production had
risen steadily since regulations limiting the amount of tea that could
be planted were scrapped in 1992, Hemaratne said, with smallholders
tending to produce better quality.
Last year, Sri Lanka produced 319 million kg of tea, making it the
world's fourth-largest producer after China, India and Kenya and the
second largest exporter after Kenya - China and India consuming most of
their own output.
Kenya produced 328 million kg in 2005, but a drought that has slashed
food and crop output across East Africa has left its tea board experts
predicting a 16 per cent fall in production to 276 million kg. Hemaratne
said local growers might benefit from better prices if Kenya's largest
consumer, Pakistan, began buying more Ceylon tea.
Sri Lanka also competes with Kenya for buyers in Russia, which
accounts for 19 per cent of exports from the island. "It's too early to
be certain," he said. "But we do have some expectations. Last year, we
exported 299 million kg, this year we expect 305-310 million."
But overall, he said many tea growers in Sri Lanka, which switched to
tea production under British rule in the nineteenth century after a
blight annihilated coffee plantations, were still losing money on every
kilogramme of tea they produced.
The large tea plantations in the central highlands, still rejoicing
in British names such as Eskdale and Queensberry, were suffering from
poor quality tea and damage to leaves just as wage demands were
increasing sharply.
"The problem is mainly between the field and the factory," he said.
"You are getting a lot of damage to the leaf. You get lower quality. We
are conducting seminars and classes to address this." - Kenya Times |