Vietnam cuts 2011 coffee export forecast

Vietnam, the world's top robusta producer, has cut its annual coffee export projection for calendar year 2011 to 1.12 million tonnes, or 18.7 million bags, from 1.17 million tonnes, the agriculture ministry said. August's export volume of 36,000 tonnes was below previous forecasts, leading to the downward adjustment for the whole of 2011, the ministry said in a report seen on Wednesday.
Early last month, the ministry had lowered its forecast for exports this year to 1.17 million tonnes from the 1.20 million tonnes projected in early August. The report said Vietnam harvested 1.17 million tonnes, or 19.5 million bags, of coffee in the 2010/2011 crop year that ended last Friday, up 5.6 percent from the previous season. The ministry's output figure is above the 18.33 million 60-kg bags estimated by the Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association (Vicofa) and the median 18.5 million bags in a Reuters poll of traders world-wide in July.
The Agriculture Ministry's report did not provide any ministry forecast for Vietnam's 2011/2012 coffee crop but it cited the International Coffee Organisation as saying the harvest 'would continue rising'. Traders polled by Reuters said the new harvest could bring in up to 24 million bags. The report cited assessments by farmers that the domestic coffee price would stay at 45 million dong ($2,160) a tonne this season, helped by a plan to stockpile 300,000 tonnes of beans at the start of the new crop year.
As such, exporters would need $648 million to buy beans on the domestic market for stockpiling. But prices have been easing in recent days, tracking losses in global markets on concerns over the economic outlook and news that Vietnam was entering a bumper harvest with a record robusta output, the report said. Last month Vicofa Chairman Luong Van Tu used a domestic price of 40 million dong a tonne when talking about the funds needed to facilitate the stockpiling scheme.