Business
EA’s flowering exports nipped in the bud
A worker at a flower farm in Kenya packs roses for export to Europe. Governments and players in the horticulture industry are crafting new interventions to help the sector stay afloat. Photo/FILE
Posted Saturday, May 2 2009 at 12:32
Earlier on, because most horticulture products are perishable, investors in the flower sector had complained about the lack of cold-rooms.
The government installed a refrigerated room with a capacity to store 30 metric tonnes of perishable products.
Since then, only East African growers, a subsidiary of East African Growers, Kenya, has come into the Rwandan market and diversified exports to include passion fruit, snow peas, pineapples and Japanese plums — besides roses and bananas.
Rwanda’s role model was Ethiopia, Africa’s second sensation, which until late last year saw its horticultural industry grow at speeds that threatened Kenya’s supremacy.
Reports coming from Addis Ababa now, however, are depressing.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is appealing to the country’s banks not to put a number of flower farms under receivership, as threatened.
Panic coursed through the banking sector in March following reports of imminent turbulence.
Since then, 25 farms have fallen by the wayside, while four have been put up for auction after failing to service bank loans. They are yet to find buyers.
Growers have appealed for help from airlines, banks and suppliers to keep the industry going.
Addis Ababa, which was seeking to compete with Kenya, and had projected that horticulture would eventually overtake coffee in earnings, is not sure any more what the future holds.
Ethiopia is expecting to earn 60 per cent of a projected $280 million from flower exports this year.
The Horn of Africa nation earned $177.6 million last year from the sale of 1.5 billion stems.
Tsegaye Abebe, chairman of the Ethiopian Horticulture Producers and Exporters Association, has appealed to the banks to reschedule all loans and cut down on interest rates.
This is “to help ease the pain of all growers operating in the country”, he says in a proposal to Mr Zenawi, who has promised to intercede personally on their behalf.
Recently, Zenawi said the government would do everything in its power to ensure the sector, an important foreign currency earner, survives the crisis.
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