Bujumbura, Sept 13 - Burundi needs private investment in its tea processing factories to boost quality and revenues, a government official said on Thursday.
The coffee-growing nation has five main tea processing factories across the country, but they are fitted with obsolete machinery and analysts say the local industry loses $20 million a year because of the old equipment.
"We want to open up for local and foreign investors ... This will enable us to have new machines capable of processing a greater quantity of tea and improve the quality," said Jean de Dieu Mutabazi, Burundi's Agricultural Minister.
The government would let private investors set up their own tea factories and plant their own tea plantations.
"The aim of these reforms is to have a Burundian tea which is more competitive on the quality level," he told Reuters.
Mutabazi said the government planned to build five more tea factories with the help of donors.
Burundi exports 80 percent of its tea crop to Kenya for sale at auction in Mombasa, where due to low quality it generally fetches about half the price of Kenyan or Rwandan tea.
The state-run Burundi Tea Board (OTB) says it needs some $25 million to renovate its factories. It says output is seen rising 15 percent this year to some 7,300 tonnes thanks to good rains. It has forecast earnings of $11.3 million in 2007.
Tea is the second biggest hard currency earner for the small nation of 8 million people, where officials say it supports some 300,000 smallholder farmers.