There was an increase in the quantity of green coffee produced in the country last year. This is contained in figures on coffee production released by the National Agriculture Export Board (NAEB), yesterday.

Total production of green coffee increased to 1,762,630 kilogrammes in December 2016 from 1,569,075 kilogrammes same period in the previous year representing a 12 per cent increase.

Overall Rwanda harvested more than 22,008,931 kilogrammes of coffee in 2016 compared to 21,801,913 kilogrammes in 2015.

The export body attributed the increase to the heavy rains and modern farming skills that farmers have been embracing.

Declining revenues

Meanwhile despite increase in production, coffee export receipts remained way bellow compared to the expectations.

The sector raked in only $58,490,086 million in 2016 compared to $62,037,690 earned in 2015.

This is a decline in revenue of almost 5.72%, the export body said in a statement attributing the situation to less quantities of coffee sold in 2016.

Rwanda sold about 18,641,135 kilogrammes in 2016 compared to 18,793,308 kgs sold in 2015.

Equally coffee prices declined marginally in 2016 compared to 2015. Prices declined to $2.97/kg down from 3.24 kg same period in 2015.

In general, Rwanda’s coffee production capacity increased by 0.4 percent.

NAEB has been emphasising value addition and encouraging farmers and cooperatives to take advantage of coffee washing stations to boost the quality of coffee exports, the statement from NAEB indicated.

More than 400,000 farmers depend on coffee farming for their livelihood.

Recently, NAEB unveiled a five-year strategic plan aimed at increasing coffee exports. The strategic plan seeks to increase coffee exports to an annual average growth rate of 29% to achieve annual export receipts of more than $104,300,000 by 2018, from $60,887,640 in 2013.

The strategic plan is to increase productivity and value addition along the value chain to make the country’s coffee industry more competitive and beneficial to farmers.

The idea, according to NAEB, is to increase productivity from 2.4kg per coffee tree in 2013 to 3.1kg per tree by 2018.

Additional land of about 3000ha will be secured to increase productivity while emphasising the need for increasing fully washed coffee up to 71% by 2018.

Rwanda exports 42% of its coffee to Switzerland, 12.4% to United Kingdom, 20.9% to the United States, 5.8% to South Africa, 0.5% Germany and 1.5% to South Korea, among others.