K0.5b for coffee

THE Papua New Guinea Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) expects the country to earn more than K500 million from coffee exports should the current healthy export trend continues through to the end of the year.
Chief executive officer of CIC Navi Anis told reporters in Goroka yesterday that the industry was expecting an average of just over one million bags for exports by 2011 given the healthy export record.
 “Unless there is a sharp decline in the volume of exportable bags of coffee, total revenue from coffee exports should be in excess of K500 million by the end of the year, some K40 million higher than the last three years when earning was averaging K460 million,” Anis said.
He said at the end of last month, PNG exported 712,352 bags.
This was slightly higher than the last three years where export was below 700,000 bags for the same period.
He rejected a report in the Post-Courier on Tuesday where WR Carpenters general manager Ramesh Vasudevan said the coffee industry would lose K75 million in revenue this year due to the dry weather condition in the highlands.
 WR Carpenters is one of the leading coffee exporters in the country.
“Yes, the prolonged dry season in some areas might have a negative impact in terms of production but, to say that the industry stands to lose K75 million in export revenue is not entirely true,” Anis responded.
He said the current high prices of coffee (K6.20 per kilogram on roadside buying parchment) throughout this year had been a real booster for farmers, especially smallholders and blockholders in terms of production.
He said coffee was still coming in and people were still harvesting them, which should prop up the production and export figures for the remainder of this year.
Anis said that wider industry observation was that the flowering for next year’s crop production had been good.
He said if good weather continued, next year’s crop should be higher than the last three years average of about one million bags (60kg/bag) exported.
This process had been assisted further by the recent rains, which had brought about additional flo-wering in most of the coffee-growing areas.