By JASON SOM KAUT
WHILE the US imports about 22 million coffee bags a year, Papua New Guinea could only account for at the least a million bags mainly due to problems transporting the produce from the farms to buying centres.
Bad roads in the rural areas are the biggest hurdles that coffee growers have to deal with, a problem that had been plaguing the sector for 32 years now.
And because of this, major buyers like the US continued to miss out on PNG’s coffee known of its strong aroma and uniquely-blended organic taste while the country’s potential as major coffee source remained far from being realised.
This was the observation made by Bernard Goma, export manager of Growers Direct Coffee Co, formerly known as Coffee Pacifica Inc.
CPI recently agreed to a name change as it intended to promote the “grower-based” organisation’s “from coffee tree to cup” concept.
“Aggressive promotion and marketing was needed from all stakeholders to increase our export capacity and extend the flow of benefits to more coffee producers,” Mr Goma said.
He said not enough was being done to bring coffee to markets, in particular from rural villages isolated by a poor road system and costly transport service.
Mr Goma claimed that authorities were not doing their mandated duty to promote PNG coffee and address constraints faced by coffee growers.
He said: ‘We can’t just push papers for policies that we do not carry out and are not prepared to work to fulfillment.
“All we’ll do was incur bureaucratic costs without seeing any tangible developments … the bureaucratic system had stunted the coffee industry progress for 32 years now.
“The people were excited with the launch of the national agriculture development plan (NADP) but poor transportation infrastructure remained the biggest stumbling block as many coffee bags were rotting due to bad roads,” Mr Goma said.
“We could producing more than one million bags but we are not doing enough to bring them to markets, convert them into cash and enjoy the benefits.”
Growers Direct was given an export licence in April 2005. It organises coffee from co-operative societies in Morobe, Madang, Wewak and Popondetta and exports this product to Canada, US, Europe for the farmers.
Recently, it cut into the lucrative Chinese coffee market.
And Taiwan was understood to also have expressed interest in PNG’s organically grown coffee.
In 2005, PNG exported 11 containers and last year 40, containers containing about 300 bags.
Due to the elections this year, it only shipped 15 containers so far and would this week deliver another two containers.
Growers Direct is the only PNG company listed on the NASDAQ listing on the New York stock exchange.