The country is looking at boosting the quality of tea to boost export receipts that are needed to offset the widening trade deficit.
According to Central Bank, trade deficit widened by 10.2 percent in the third quarter of last year despite a 4.9 percent increase in value and 5.4 in volume for exports.
This implies that improving the quality of tea which is among the leading foreign exchange earning crop will increase volumes as well as enhance its competiveness in the world market thus raising its value.
Rwanda’s tea has been fetching high value at the Mombasa Auction, which is the leading tea auction in the region compared to other tea from the region.
The standard will mean improving the whole value chain mainly from the harvest handling to the factory processing of the green leaf to help the country achieve the average 7 aggregates of the quality liquor indicator gauge.
The gauge that has a standard of 11 looks at the quality and pricing of the cash crop; which now helps to categorize tea in the market.
George William Kayonga, the National Agricultural export Board Chief executive Officer is optimistic that improving the standard of tea will help the country increase export receipt from the cash crops that registered a decline in the 11 months of last year.
“Through value addition and product diversification we can be able to increase the value and volumes of our tea exports,” he said
According to Central bank, tea export fetched $48.2m from 22,202 metric tonsin the third quarter of 2014 compared to the 2014 annual targets of $68.6m.
There is optimism according to experts that will constant improvement in the washing stations and support to farmers in terms of inputs is likely to boost the tea sector which needs to hit a production of 41,070.5 metric tons by 2018.
Rwanda exports around 97.3% of its raw form with 60 percent sold at the Auction at Mombasa, according to the country export board, National Agriculture export board-NAEB sector statistics.
