KAMPALA, June 7 (Xinhua) -- Uganda is implementing targeted interventions in the coffee sector to boost production in the country's major foreign exchange earner.
President Yoweri Museveni, while delivering the State of Nation Address on Thursday in parliament, said the government is focusing on the distribution of better seedlings and improving harvesting, post-harvesting and storage methods.
"If we can increase production per hectare of coffee as an example from the current 0.67 tons to 2.2 tons per hectare like in Brazil and Vietnam, Uganda would be earning about 2 billion U.S. dollars from unprocessed coffee alone," Museveni said.
With that production, he said, Uganda will produce 21 million bags of green coffee per year, and if the coffee was roasted before export, the country would earn 6.7 billion dollars annually.
If the coffee is processed and transformed into soluble instant coffee, the earnings would go up to 16.8 billion dollars annually.
Museveni said in the financial year 2017/2018, Uganda earned 492 million dollars from coffee exports.
