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Coffee industry plans to become global leader
Vietnam has plans to become a world leader in the coffee market, said Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Diep Kinh Tan.
Tan confirmed that coffee exports looked particularly promising due to their already strong presence on the overseas markets.
Head of the International Coffee Organisation Nesto Osorio said that despite ranking as the second largest coffee producing country worldwide after Brazil, Vietnam still had two advantages: it has the world’s largest output of robusta coffee and the world’s lowest production costs.
In addition, World Trade Organisation membership has substantially increased the opportunities for Vietnam’s coffee industry, giving it access to over 5 billion customers.
Accession to the WTO has given the country a golden chance to promote its coffee exports, as the organisation represents 95 percent of the world market and has an import turnover of US$635 billion per year, according to the president of the Vietnam Cocoa and Coffee Association (Vicofa) Luong Van Tu.
The world demand for coffee was expected to increase by 120,000 tonnes a year to 8.4 million tonnes by 2018, Tu said at a seminar discussing the impact of two-years of WTO membership on Vietnam’s coffee, cocoa, pepper and cashew nut sectors in Hanoi on July 9.
Participants agreed that with good conditions in terms of price and market, annual earnings of more than US$2 billion were within the sector’s reach provided that it made the necessary investments.
Vietnam has been exporting 850,000 tonnes of coffee beans to more than 70 countries and territories every year and reached more than 1 million tonnes last year, equivalent to over US$1.6 billion. In the first half of this year, the country earned more than US$1 billion from coffee exports.
Vietnam has emerged as Germany’s second largest coffee exporter thanks to the local people’s growing demand for the product. Figures released by the German Federal Statistical Office show that Vietnam shipped 234,000 tonnes of coffee to Germany last year, just behind Brazil, which supplied up to 288,000 tonnes.
According to the office, coffee is popular among Germans, who drank about 13kg each in 2007.
Vietnamese exported about 11,000 tonnes of coffee to Morocco last year, accounting for approximately half of the coffee imports into the country. Vietnam aims to raise the figure to 13,000-14,000 tonnes in 2008.
However, Vicofa vice president Doan Trieu Nhan said that Vietnamese coffee growers and processors should standardise their coffee production and improve the quality of exports to meet world market requirements.
Though Vietnam is the world’s second largest coffee exporter after Brazil, the profits have been minimal. Other countries not even growing coffee have reaped higher profits by selling value-added products that meet world standards.
Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Cao Duc Phat stressed to local authorities that they needed to manage the quality of coffee seeds and prevent the sale of low-quality seeds, given the surge in demand.
Minister Phat also asked the Agro-forestry Processing Department to improve the competitiveness of Vietnamese coffee beans.
The department plans to implement measures to improve the quality coffee beans and support farmers while they switch to using new, high-yield seeds.
A national standard for growing, harvesting, processing, preserving and classifying robusta coffee exports will be applied by November.
VOV
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