HCM City, Vietnam – The 2017-18 coffee crop is expected to yield around 1.4 million, which is equal to or slightly lower than last year’s harvest, according to the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association.
Nguyen Nam Hai, deputy chairman of the association, said the annual coffee crop would enter the harvest season in October or November.
If the weather is favourable this year, Central Highlands’ provinces, which account for more than 90 per cent of the country’s coffee cultivation area, will have 1.3 million tonnes of coffee.
Last year, the region encountered a severe drought but this year coffee gardens have had enough water for irrigation.
But because coffee farms have many old trees, coffee output is expected to remain about the same last year, he said.
Coffee prices in the domestic market reached a peak in January when a kilo of coffee sold for 47,000 VND.
The price was 43,000-43,500 VND a kilo on May 19 depending on locality, a reduction of 200 VND from the preceding day.
Vietnam’s coffee exports in the 2016-17 crop (which ran from October last year to September this year) will reach 1.4-1.5 million tonnes, Hai said.
As of April 30, the country exported more than 960,000 tonnes of coffee, he said.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, enterprises exported 1.79 million tonnes of coffee for a value of 3.36 billion USD last year, a year-on-year increase of nearly 34 per cent in volume and 24 per cent in value.
The average export price was 1,872 USD a tonne, a reduction of 6 percent over 2015.
The average export price reached 2,267 USD a tonne in the first quarter of this year, up 33 per cent over the same period last year, according to the ministry’s figure.
The country earned 1.34 billion USD from exporting 592,000 tonnes of coffee in the first quarter, an increase of 19 percent in value but a reduction of 11 percent in volume.
