By ETimes
Zimbabwe will allocate US$500,000 towards the setting up of a coffee bean facility in Manicaland so as to earn more foreign currency from the product, an official said.
Manicaland, to the country’s east, is widely regarded as one of the best coffee-growing regions in the world.
“I committed to that. By just washing those coffee beans, we push up the price by another 30 percent,” Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told a post-budget breakfast meeting held in the capital.
Many farms and mills love the washed process because it produces high-quality coffee with more certainty and consistency than the other methods.
Beans from the Chipinge, Chimanimani, Mutasa, and Mutare regions of the province are renowned for having a remarkably deep taste and aroma.
Zimbabwe used to produce 15,000 tonnes of coffee yearly, but that amount has since decreased as a result of farmers switching to faster-growing cash crops including cotton, tobacco, sugar beans, and soya beans.
Approximately 20,000 people were engaged in the coffee industry during its height in the late 1980s, when it generated approximately US$54 million in foreign exchange earnings and contributed an estimated 2,1% to the GDP of the nation.
Zimbabwe’s coffee output was rated fourth in the early 1990s, after Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda-HARARE