By Moyiga Nduru
BUJUMBURA, Nov 4 1996 (IPS)

You could call it forced savings, but for the people who administer Burundi’s coffee industry, it’s more a question of the horse starving while the grass is growing.

It’s all about coffee, tonnes of it. Some of it is in farmers’ barns. Most is in the Burundi Coffee Board’s warehouses, forced to remain there by the embargo imposed by other East and Central African nations to punish a military junta for seizing power in late July.

“We have 25,000 tonnes of coffee worth about 14 billion Burundi franc (44.4 million U.S. dollars) ready for export lying in warehouses around the country,” Hermenegilde Rufyikiri of the Burundi Coffee Board told IPS last month. “We can’t export the coffee to the international market because of the blockade imposed on us by our neighbours.”

According to Rufyikiri, the 25,000 tonnes of coffee stored in warehouses around the country can stay, if well stored, for up to 10 years, but there is a limit to their storage capacity.

The embargo was imposed by Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Zambia, Cameroon and Zaire on July 31 to force de facto president Major Pierre Buyoya, to return Burundi to civilian rule.

By the end of the first week of August, air, road and water links with Burundi had been cut off, effectively isolating the land-locked nation from the rest of the world, thus preventing it from selling its goods abroad.

Coffee is the most important of those commodities. It’s what makes Burundi’s economy tick, accounting for 80 percent of the country’s foreign currency earnings and about 40 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Burundi produces up to 25,000 tonnes of coffee per year, most of which is sold to France, Germany and Britain and the interruption of exports could have serious repercussions for the industry.

It could reduce the amount farmers get for their beans after the sanctions are eventually lifted since the coffee board, which buys up their produce, is sinking deeper into debt by the day.

The Burundi Coffee Board had borrowed eight billion francs (about 25.4 million dollars) from a local bank, at an annual interest rate of 12.5 percent, to pay farmers for this year’s crop, according to its director, Thomas Minani.

“We haven’t been able to pay back the loan because we haven’t sold our coffee yet,” he said.

Should the embargo last one year, the interest payments will amount to about 3.1 million dollars. By the end of year two, they would have totalled some 6.7 million dollars, which the board might well seek to offset by reducing the price it pays to farmers.

The embargo has prevented the country from participating in a programme to upgrade the quality of its beans and thus increase its earnings from the commodity.

In September, Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Brazil and Papua New Guinea were selected by the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) headquarters in London, Britain, for a special quality coffee promotion project.

The scheme, known as “government coffee project”, is the first ever to be supervised by the ICO and it is expected to help the five countries implement a sustainable coffee quality marketing strategy, but Burundi’s participation will have to be put on hold.

Burundi’s coffee is under threat from another quarter: it is grown in the very areas where the country’s Tutsi-dominated army is fighting Hutu rebels.

Near the border with Rwanda, thousands of acres of coffee plantations lie in ruins. “This is the area which produces 60 percent of Burundi’s coffee,” said Presidential Spokesperson Jean- Luc Ndizeye. “It has now been abandoned by farmers because of harassment by the so- called rebels.”

Sources here said farmers in other areas had been urged by Hutu rebels to cut down the trees so as to deprive the country’s Tutsi- led government of coffee revenue should the embargo be lifted. However, the growers have ignored the call because of the financial sacrifice it entails.

“Farmers need money to pay the school fees of their children. I don’t think it will be in the best interest of the rebels if they force us to cut down the trees,” said one grower who refused to be named for fear of reprisals. “The rebels will only be alienating the farmers because it takes five or more years for a coffee tree to start yielding once it is cut down.”

It’s not just farmers who are affected by the uncertainty Burundi’s economy faces. “Burundi is a poor land-locked country and needs international support to survive,” said Ndizeye. “It has not been able to export its coffee and will not be able to pay its civil service.”

In October, Buyoya called upon Burundi’s civil servants to be patient and to understand the economic problems caused by the blocade. How long they will remain patient is anyone’s guess.

The private sector, too, is affected. Prime Minister Pascal Firmin Ndimira said many companies had cut back on production and sacked 20,000 redundant workers in Bujumbura alone. He said the embargo had cost Burundi some 162 million dollars and that if it was not lifted immediately the country would grind to a standstill.

That was in early October. The social and financial cost of the embargo has most likely increased significantly since then.

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