Bangalore: Though coffee exports from India witnessed a 10-year low in 2009, exporters believe the trend would change and exports will pick up in 2010 because of good output.
In 2009, government-owned Coffee Board had issued permits to export 1, 89,399 tonne of coffee, down by 13% compared to the last year’s 2,17,994 tonne.
“These figures are provisional and were arrived based on the permits issued to exporters so far. The actual exports figures for 2009 may be still low. Only after three months, the board could come out with actual export figures,” a board official said requesting anonymity.
Even in 2008, the board issued permits to export 217,994 tonne but the actual exports stood at 213,159 tonne, according to the latest data available with the Coffee Board.
Generally, 3-4% difference is seen between ‘permits issued’ and ‘actual exports’ every year due to various reasons.
In value terms, too, the country’s foreign exchange through coffee exports in 2009 stood low at Rs 2,030 crore, down 14% compared to Rs 2,362 crore registered in the previous year.
Although the unit value (per tonne) of the coffee stood above Rs 1-lakh mark in 2009, it declined when compared to 2008 figures.
Coffee price at the international market stood at Rs 1, 07,214 per tonne in 2009, down from Rs 1, 09,831 per tonne in 2008.
“2009 is the worst year in terms of coffee exports as overseas sales never stood below 2,00,000 tonne in the past 10 years,” the official said.
India exported 2,53,524 tonne of coffee in 2000, 2,23,782 tonne in 2001, 2,13,008 tonne in 2002, 2,22,425 tonnes in 2003, 2,28,246 tonne in 2004, 2,03,768 tonne in 2005, 2,44,989 tonne in 2006 and 2,14,291 tonne in 2007.
The exports declined in the past year mainly due to dip in the production.
A considerable decline was seen in Arabica parchment exports that almost tumbled by 50% year-on-years.
The country’s Arabica parchment exports stood at 20, 113 tonne in 2009, down from 39,486 tonne exported in 2008.
Exports of Robusta parchment declined to 14,610 tonne from 18,032 tonne, while Robusta cherry exports tumbled to 81,543 tonne from 89,510 tonne.
In fact, Coffee Board's post-blossom estimate for 2008-09 crop year had stood at a whopping 2.93 lakh tonne, but it fell to 2.62 lakh tonne during the post-monsoon estimation.
However the exporters are pinning their hopes on 2009-10 crop year, when the coffee production is likely to be in the range of 2, 89,600 tonne, according to post monsoon projection of Coffee Board
Source : FinancialExpress