Tea prices at the Mombasa auction rose marginally last week to touch a month high after a losing streak in the previous four sales.
A market report by East African Tea Traders Association (EATTA) shows on average a kilogram of tea fetched Sh298 last week up from Sh292 the in previous sale.
The price had been dipping in the four sales on account of higher volumes at the weekly tea trades.
The volume of tea at the auction last week rose to 8.3 million kilograms from 7.9 million in the previous sale.
“Out of 139,587 packages (9,080,000kg) available for sale, 127,492 packages (8,303,201kg) were sold with 8.6 per cent remaining unsold,” says EATTA in the report.
The price of the commodity had hit a high of Sh300 per kilogram last month, marking the second time the value had crossed the Sh3
00 mark since the beginning of the year.
Tea production for 2017 is, however, still expected to drop by double digits due to the effects of drought.
The Agriculture and Food Authority says production of green leaf will drop from 473 million kilograms in 2016 to about 420 million kilograms this year.
The beverage earned Kenya $1.226 billion (Sh127.3 billion) last year, which was a drop of 1.7 per cent from the $1.247 billion (Sh129.4 billion) it recorded in 2015