20100806
reuters

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Resurgent coffee sales and diversification into other products lifted Ethiopia's exports to a record $2 billion in 2009/2010 from $1.5 billion in the previous year, the trade ministry told Reuters on Friday.

"Coffee has bounced back to $528 million this year," trade ministry spokesman, Amakale Yimam, told Reuters.

Ethiopia's export total fell well short of the $2.9 billion predicted by Minister of Trade, Girma Birru, in an interview with Reuters in November.

But Amakale said the Horn of Africa nation projected $3 billion in export revenue for 2010/2011 based on growth in new export commodities.

"Diversification has also helped our exports," Amakale said. "We're going to make more money from leather products and vegetables and flowers ... So we're confident we can make $3 billion."

In 2008/2009 (June/July), coffee earnings in Africa's biggest coffee exporter slumped to just $375.8 million after bad weather obliterated entire crops in some growing zones.

Exports last year were also shaken by Japan's insistence on testing beans on arrival after it found some were contaminated with pesticides. Japan, which buys almost 20 percent of Ethiopia's beans, has resumed imports.

Ethiopia prides itself on being the birthplace of coffee. Some 15 million smallholder farmers grow the crop, mostly in forested highlands in the west of the country.