Agri Corp Records $840,000 in Falling Incense Export Revenues

Aug 6 , 2022

The state-owned Ethiopian Agricultural Businesses Corporation earned close to 840,000 dollars from the export of incense last year. A little over 500 quintals of incense was shipped to markets in Europe, Asia and Africa bringing in around 60pc of what the Corporation's executives had forecasted. A decline in production due to war has left Ethiopia's incense exporters unable to take advantage of a surge in global prices shooting up by nearly two-thirds. Incense is produced mainly in the Tigray and Amhara regional states, where militarised conflict has curtailed production. Exporters, including the Corporation, had shipped 500tn of incense over the first three quarters of last year, generating 2.2 million dollars. It is five times lower than export revenues from seven years ago, when Ethiopia shipped 3,500tn of incense, earning 11.8 million dollars. Still, the earnings were 200,000 dollars higher than what was registered over 2020/21. The primary sources of frankincense are tree or shrub species of the genus Boswellia, which comprises 20 species, of which six are found in Ethiopia.