Bangalore, April 3 Poor demand for instant coffees prompted by the global economic downturn has dragged down the Indian coffee exports for fiscal 2008-09.
Provisional figures indicate that the exports of instant coffees fell by a fifth to 56,694 tonnes in fiscal 2009 compared with 67,193 tonnes primarily due to poor offtake from countries such as Russia. The instant coffees accounted for about a fourth of Indian exports of 2.04 lakh tonnes.
“There was a drop of almost 7,500 tonnes in export of instant coffee to Russia, which happened in the past two quarters due to global financial crisis,” said Mr G.V. Krishna Rau, Chairman, Coffee Board. Other key destinations that saw a shortfall in green coffee exports include the US and Finland.
The overall exports fell by seven per cent to 2.04 lakh tonnes (lt) compared with 2.18 lt in the previous year. Of the 2.04 lt exported, the Indian coffees accounted for 1.88 lt, while the remaining 16,000 tonnes was re-exports.
The unit realisation went up to Rs 1,12 lakh a tonne compared with Rs 93,439 per tonne. Exports of arabica cherry dropped by a fifth to 9,134 tonnes (11,371 tonnes last fiscal), while Arabica parchment exports fell marginally to 35,070 tonnes (34,514 tonnes).
Similarly, robusta parchment exports were down to 16,812 tonnes (20,633 tonnes). However, Robusta cherry volumes were up 3 per cent to 89,747 tonnes.
Source : Business Line