Colombo, January 30:

Sri Lanka, one of the world’s top exporters of tea, sold a record 308 million kgs of the commodity to overseas buyers last year, a brokering house said today.

The tea exports in 2005 were 2.83 per cent higher than in 2004, maintaining a small but steady increase seen in the past three years. Russia and former Soviet Union republics remained the largest market for Sri Lankan tea, better known by the island’s former name of Ceylon, and accounted for nearly a fifth of the total exports.

Sri Lanka earned $814 million from tea exports last year, up from $741 million in 2004, the report stated. Tea is Sri Lanka’s largest single foreign exchange earner after remittances from its nationals employed abroad. “For the third year in succession Sri Lanka shipped a record volume of tea,” the report stated noting that the island had imported 10 million kgs of tea for blending and re-exporting.

Sri Lanka has been competing fiercely with Kenya in tea exports.