Officials present reports

By JOY NEMO
FIVE government officials who attended policy-writing training for next year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit  presented their reports to the Apec Secretariat this week.
The training was held with the help of the  Japanese international funding agency (Jica).
Subjects at training included global challenges and best mitigation.
Participant Leo Kapa from the Coffee Industry Corporation did his presentation on “strengthening the export competitiveness of small-medium coffee producers” from the Japanese perspective.
Kapa said 85 per cent of the coffee produced by small holders was not of export quality (Y grade) to Japan.
Y grade is the coffee that is blended by variety, altitude, grade, processing points and at parchment-buying points – all mixed in one bag.
He also said PNG coffee was missing out on the Japanese specialty market because the coffee produced was not A grade.
This is so because of missing links in the PNG coffee business chain. The growers did not know the chain and expectation.
“All this knowledge is kept by the exporters so the growers keep on producing Y grade coffee,” Kapa said.
He proposed an action plan to address the issue and that is to develop a coffee training school to communicate the quality innovations to the farmers.