By
Desire Nimubona
December
11, 2011
Burundi’s
coffee growers threatened to stop selling produce unless they are granted a
controlling stake in the East African nation’s washing stations, said Joseph
Ntirampeba, president of the farmers’ association.
The
country started selling its coffee-washing and purification plants to closely
held companies in 2009, with Webcor Ltd., a Swiss company, buying 13 stations.
Burundi in November said it plans to sell the remaining 133 stations.
Farmers
should hold a controlling stake in the plants as they have paid a tax of 60
Burundian francs ($0.04) per kilogram of coffee cherries since the 1980s to pay
for the construction of the stations, Ntirampeba, who leads the National
Federation of Coffee-Growing Associations of Burundi, known as CNAC, said
by phone Dec. 9 from Bujumbura, the capital.
“We are
not ready to give our coffee freely when we are not really involved,” he said.
“Coffee is our business, our efforts, everything to us as it is grown on our
lands and we spend all the time working in it.”
Coffee
output in Burundi, which grows mainly the arabica variety and relies on the
crop to generate more than half its foreign-currency earnings, may drop 13
percent to 21,000 metric tons this year amid declining plantings, the Burundi
Coffee Regulatory Agency said in June.
Production
is falling because of a lack of motivation among farmers, who are replacing the
beans with other crops, according to Ntirampeba.
Growers
are “revolting against themselves” and will be the first to suffer if the
plants are destroyed, Finance Ministry spokesman Joseph Ndayikeza said by phone
from Bujumbura on Dec. 9.
Arabica-coffee
futures for March delivery snapped three days of losses, adding 0.6 percent to
$2.2725 a pound by 9:31 a.m. in New York on Dec. 9.
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To contact the
reporter on this story: Desire Nimubona in Bujumbura via Nairobi
atpmrichardson@bloomberg.net
To contact the
editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin
at asguazzin@bloomberg.net