Coffee exports from Uganda, Africa’s biggest shipper of the commodity, fell 4.1 percent in the 2015-16 season, extending declines for a third year as poor weather hurt the crop.
Shipments from Oct. 1, 2015 through September fell to 3.32 million 60-kilogram bags from 3.46 million bags a year earlier, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority said by e-mail on Tuesday.
“It is mainly the weather that significantly affected output,” David Muwonge, deputy executive director of the Kampala-based National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises, said by phone from the capital. “The weather has been erratic.”
Uganda, which mainly grows robusta coffee, consumes less than 3 percent of its annual crop and exports mainly to Europe. The East African nation plans to plant 900 million new coffee trees in the three years through June 2019 to boost production, according to the UCDA.
Bloomberg