Vietnam #coffee exports down 17.7% to $1.26b in Jan-Aug

Vietnam is estimated to have earned $1.26 billion from exporting 848,000 tons of coffee beans between January and August, down 17.7% in value against the same period last year despite a rise of 16.8% in value, the government’s General Statistics Office (GSO) said.

Low value is mostly attributed to falling export prices of Vietnamese coffee as a result of global price decreases.

In August, the country shipped 60,000 tons of coffee beans abroad, raking in $87 million, up as compared to 53,000 tons in volume and $76 million in value it had last month.

Vietnam, the world’s largest Robusta coffee exporter, plans to replace 11,000 hectares of coffee trees aging over 20 years old in order to ensure stable coffee output in the coming years. Analysts advised the country to keep its coffee plantation area stable at around 500,000 ha, yielding out one million tons of coffee beans per crop on average.

At present, Vietnam has about 506,000 hectares of coffee trees, nearly 470,000 hectares of which are located in the Central Highlands.

Earlier, the International Coffee Association said that Vietnam may harvest a bumper crop in 2009-2010 with expected output of 16.5 million 60-kilogram coffee bags, compared to the previous crop with 16 million bags.

The country is forecast to export 1.02 million tons of coffee beans during this crop which started from October last year, up 15.7% against the previous crop.