Sri Lankan tea production rose 13 percent in May from a year earlier, the Sri Lanka Tea Board said on Friday, citing favourable weather. Tea output rose to 33.34 million kg, from 29.51 million kg in May 2006.
Output had fallen 25.7 percent in April from the same month a year earlier due to the lingering fallout of a strike last year, drought in low growing areas and high fertiliser prices.
"Now the production is catching up because of favourable weather conditions and there is no effect from May onwards from the labour unrest which we had late last year," H.D. Hemarathna, director general of the Sri Lanka Tea Board, said.
Total tea production from January to May slipped 13 percent to 120.14 million kg from 138.03 million kg during the first five months of 2006 because of the strike, the tea board said.
A wage strike by the bulk of the island's 400,000 tea estate workers late last year dented tea output for the first four months of 2007. "The fall of the period January to May is connected with the labour unrest in the latter part of last year and that resulted in normal agricultural practices not being followed," Hemarathna said
"They have not done the pruning and not plucked, so branches grew very fast but we hope full year production will be more than 310 million kg with the catching up of production from May."
Sri Lanka's record 2005 harvest of 317.2 million kg made it the world's number-four producer behind China, India and Kenya and second only in exports to Kenya. Tea is one of Sri Lanka's main foreign currency revenue earners along with remittances, tourism and textiles. Tea brought in more than $600 million last year, while tourism raked in around $450 million.
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