The tea industry recorded the highest export earnings ever of Sh180.57 billion last year.
This was a significant increase from Sh138.09 billion recorded in 2022 and 136.59 billion in 2021.
According to the Kenya Tea Industry performance highlights for 2023, a further Sh16.4 billion was generated from the sale of tea in the domestic market.
This resulted in a total marketed value of Sh196.97 billion.
Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua said the industry recorded good production, hitting a record high of 570 million kgs compared to 535 million kgs in 2022.
“In the 2023/2024 financial year, it is envisaged that the income to smallholder tea farmers will surpass the performance of the last two years,” he said.
The DP spoke during the launch of the 2023 tea industry performance results at the Tea House in Nairobi.
The tea industry performance highlights showed that the output for the year 2023 was higher by 35.22 million kgs (6.58 percent) to stand at 570.26 million kgs against 535.04 million kgs for the year 2022.
He said notably, such a high crop of about 570 million kgs was only realized in the year 2020.
Gachagua attributed the high production to continued favourable weather conditions during the period between April to December 2023.
“Production was also boosted by the application of fertilizer through the Government fertilizer subsidy program to improve agricultural productivity. Other factors included licensing of additional processing factories in tea growing areas that had processing capacity potential with a view to reducing the post-harvest losses,” he said.
The DP said to maintain this stellar performance, the Government will continue to implement the necessary reforms to enhance its competitiveness and increase returns to growers in line with BeTA.
He directed the Agriculture CS to complete the implementation of other reforms, particularly those addressing the increasing cost of production and green leaf malpractices like tea hawking.
This is in addition to increasing stocks of unsold teas, declining quality of Kenya tea, poor governance in the management of the smallholder tea sub-sector, low levels of value addition and product diversification and depressed prices.
“Regarding value addition, the Government has prioritized increasing the level value added tea exports from five percent in 2023 to 50 percent by 2027,” the DP said.
“This is expected to increase the value of tea exports from 180.57 billion in 2023 to over 272 billion by 2027 and earnings of smallholder tea farmers from the current average of Sh59.02 in the FY 2022/23 per Kg. of Greenleaf to Sh90 per Kg by 2026/2027 FY. Other envisaged benefits include improvement in the Foreign Exchange Balance and creation of more employment opportunities, especially for the youthful generation,” said Gachagua.
The Kenya Tea Industry performance highlights for 2023 released by the Tea Board of Kenya showed that the total tea export volume increased by 16 percent (72.58 million kgs) in 2023 from 450.33 million kgs recorded in 2022 to 522.92 million kgs.
