Ethiopia says exports up 32 pct so far in '07-'08

Posted 07 April 2008 @ 03:42 am EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia's export earnings rose 32 percent year-on-year to $854.5 million for the first eight months of the 2007-2008 fiscal year, Trade and Industry Minister Girma Birru said on Friday.

Last year, Girma predicted that Ethiopia's export earnings for the full 2007-2008 year would rise by roughly 30 percent to between $1.6 billion and $1.8 billion. He based the forecast on bigger volumes of coffee, flowers and pulses.

Girma said coffee was the largest contributor to the gains so far, earning $251.1 million from the export of 85,442 tonnes during the eight months beginning in July.

He gave no figures for the comparable coffee earnings in the same period in 2006-2007, but Ethiopia for that whole year exported 176,390 tonnes and earned $424 million.

The forecast for 2007-2008 is 220,000 tonnes and earnings of about $500 million.

So far in 2007-2008, oil seeds, grains, spices and flowers generated $217.8 million while the Horn of Africa nation also exported leather goods, hides and skins, beef and livestock, gold, khat, textiles, garments and flowers.

Ethiopia's exports have diversified to 30 items from a single export -- coffee -- a decade ago. Ethiopia now sells its products to 120 countries, compared with 57 just 10 years ago.