File photo shows the arabica coffee in Mbale, eastern Uganda, on Sept. 9, 2014. (Xinhua)

 
Italy topped Uganda's coffee exports for the month of January 2020, the east African country's coffee regulator said on Monday.

Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), in a new report, said the country exported 469,951 60kg bags of coffee in January. Of these, 377,182 bags were of Robusta and 92,769 bags of Arabica.

Italy was the top purchaser of Ugandan coffee, at 32 percent, followed by Germany, 18 percent, Sudan, 14 percent and the United States, 6 percent.

Coffee is one of Uganda's major foreign exchange earners and about 500,000 households in the country depend on coffee production, according to UCDA figures.

Uganda's ministry of finance figures show that in 2018, the sector fetched 492 million US dollars, compared to the previous year's 490 million dollars.