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Coffee export value falls in January due to low prices
Coffee exporters have once again witnessed a drop in value due to the industry's failure to control prices on the world market.
A report from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that in January, Viet Nam exported 139,000 tonnes of coffee, an increase of 2 percent over the same month last year.
However, the ministry said export value was down by 8.3 percent to US$193 million, due to low prices.
In the Central Highland province of Dak Lak, the Vietnamese coffee hub, the price of coffee now stands at about VND23.7 million per tonne, a decrease of 30 percent over the same time last year.
"Foreign companies are continuing to control the price. Vietnamese companies are still under their control even though the nation is the leading Robusta coffee exporter," said Luong Van Tu, Chairman of the Viet Nam Coffee and Cocoa Association.
"Over 100 companies export a huge volume of coffee from Viet Nam but none of them are large enough in their own right to influence the price on the world market," Tu said.
Coffee importers are not only controlling the price but also challenging domestic coffee exporters by violating contracts and actually changing the price.
These unfair activities have caused many difficulties for Vietnamese coffee exporter.
Many importers violate international regulations. However, they shift the blame on to the Vietnamese companies. Some Vietnamese companies have lost hundreds of thousands of US dollars due to this, according to Nguyen Nam Hai, senior official of the Vietnamese Coffee Exporters' club.
To avoid this unbalance, Vietnamese coffee exporters have agreed to list violators on the association's website www.vicofa.org.vn.
Coffee accounts for 20 percent of the country's total agricultural export value.
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