Sri Lanka, one of the world’s biggest producers of black tea, reported yesterday that output hit a record high in 2010, helped by good weather.
The total crop for 2010 grew by 13.1 percent to 329.4 million kilogrammes (72 4.7 million pounds) from 291.1m kilograms a year earlier, according to the Sri Lanka Tea Board.
Tea is the island’s biggest commodity export earner.
The last time Sri Lanka harvested a record crop was in 2008 when it produced 318.7 million kilogrammes, the board’s director general H D Hemaratne said.
“The weather gods were good to us for the most part of last year,”
Hemaratne said.
He declined to forecast the 2011 harvest, which has been hit by heavy monsoon rains that fell on the main tea-growing areas in central Sri Lanka.
Production could also be curtailed this year by industrial unrest as a wage pact for nearly a million workers expires in April, commodity analysts say.
Tea export earnings from January to November last year jumped 16.7 percent to $1.2 billion over the same period in 2009, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka reported on Friday. (AFP)
Courtesy - The Nation
