ADDIS ABABA, March 5(Xinhuanet)-- The amount of coffee Ethiopia exported to Japan in the year 2004 has jumped 18 percent from thatexported in the previous year, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

The ministry said in a news release that Ethiopia has subsequently earned over 60 million US dollars in hard currency.

Ethiopia had exported 37,916 tons of coffee in the year 2004 and the figure surpassed by 5,000 tons from the previous year, it said, quoting the Ethiopian embassy in Tokyo.

The embassy attributed the rise to the special attention and support the government attached to the sector, coordination between coffee growers and exporters and successive promotion activities by the Ethiopian embassy in Japan over the past years.

The embassy has undertaken various activities to popularize Ethiopian coffee by preparing traditional coffee ceremony in numerous occasions.

The share of Ethiopia's coffee in Japanese market was merely 6.4 percent in 2001, ranked sixth behind Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia,Guatemala and Vietnam.

At present Japan stands second in purchasing Ethiopia's coffee after Germany. The east Asian country also occupies the third place in coffee import, next to the United States and Germany.

The annual coffee consumption of Japan has reached over 400,000tones and the consumption soars by over four percent yearly.