Dar Es Salaam, Sept 10 - Tanzania's tea production is expected to rise to about 36 million kg in 2007/08, from close to 35 million kg in 2006/07, boosted by good rains, an official at the country's tea board said on Monday.
"For 2007/08 tea production, we hope to reach 36 million kg," Mathias Assenga, acting director general of Tea Board of Tanzania, told Reuters in an interview.
"For 2006/07, we reached 34,969,584 kg. As a result of good rains and revival of one tea estate and small-scale farmers getting new seedlings, production has risen."
Drought slashed 2005/06 production to about 29 million kg, from 32 million kg in 2004/05.
Tanzania's tea production and marketing year runs from July to June, like its fiscal budget.
Assenga added that the east African economy earned $39.4 million in 2006/07 from exporting 28.3 million kg of tea. In 2005/06, it earned $27.7 million from shipping 22.4 million kg.
According to the board's statistics, about 58 percent of Tanzania's tea exports were sold through an auction at the Kenyan coastal town of Mombasa in 2006.
The rest was sold directly to buyers in countries like Britain, South Africa, Pakistan and the Netherlands.
Tea is one of Tanzania's top five cash crops along with coffee, cotton, tobacco and cashewnuts.
The country has 22,700 hectares under tea, of which 11,300 hectares belong to estates.
The rest belongs to about 32,000 smallholder farmers, most of them owning less than one hectare of land, Assenga added.
Among challenges facing the smallholder farmers are expensive inputs like fertilisers, and rigorous phytosanitary requirements needed for export to countries in Europe.
"It requires a lot of documentation, a lot of certification," Assenga said.
Tanzania plans to boost its tea production to 44 million kg by 2009/10, by boosting annual productivity to 1,500 kg per hectare from 800 kg per hectare for smallholder farmers, and to 2,500 kg per ha from about 2,000 kg per ha for estate farmers.
Assenga said that the government allocated 500 million Tanzania shillings to buy five million seedlings for smallholder farmers.
"These will be used to fill gaps between their tea bushes."
He added that the country had 23 tea processing factories, of which six were inactive. Smallholder farmers own one factory through a cooperative.
Tanzania is a small tea producer compared with its northern neighbour Kenya, which produces about 300 million kg annually.
Most of Tanzania's tea is grown in the Usambara region in the north and in the south in areas bordering the Great Rift Valley and Lake Malawi at altitudes between 900 metres and 2,300 metres with annual rainfall of 1,400 mm to 3,000 mm.
Assenga added that trial planting had started in the northwest of the country.