Coffee exports from Uganda, Africa’s second-biggest grower of the crop, will probably fall 18 percent this month after a drought cut yields, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority said.
Shipments may fall to 180,000 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags, from 219,684 bags a year earlier, the agency said in an e-mailed statement today. “The dry spell is to blame,” it said.
The forecast is 7.2 percent less than the 193,965 bags shipped in February, the authority said. East Africa’s third- largest economy has experienced a dry spell since December, which the government blames on climate change. More than 95 percent of Uganda’s crop is grown by small-scale farmers whose crop is predominantly rain-fed, according to the authority.
On Sept. 20 Uganda’s Coffee Development Authority forecast that exports in the 12 months through September would climb 16 percent to 3.1 million bags. Exports from the start of the season on Oct. 1 through February declined 7.6 percent to 1.1 million bags, according to calculations by Bloomberg.
Uganda is Africa’s largest coffee producer after Ethiopia. The East African nation, where production has fallen from 4.4 million bags in 1996-97 partly because of crop damage caused by coffee wilt disease, plans to boost output to 4.5 million bags a season by 2015 through an ongoing replanting program.
Uganda earned $243.6 million from the sales of the beans last season, down from $291.3 million a year earlier. Robusta accounts for about 85 percent of annual output.
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