Shipments during the first five months of the 2014/2015 season, which began in October, totaled 453,717 60-kg bags, an increase of 34.6 percent over the same period during the previous season.
The growth in exports so far this season is due, in part, to the recent shipment of 144,913 60-kg bags left over from the previous harvest, Cetrex said. The coffee crop in Nicaragua is expected to rise 7 percent in the 2014/2015 season to reach 1.61 million due to better control over the tree-killing fungus roya, which has hurt coffee farmers across the region over the past couple of seasons.
The coffee season in Central America and Mexico, which together produce about a fifth of the world's arabica beans, runs from October through September.