Colombia will fulfill its coffee
shipment contracts despite scarcities and delays in deliveries
and has 600,000 60-kg bags in inventories to cover its exports,
the National Federation of Coffee Growers said Friday.
Colombia, the world’s No. 3 coffee producer, has seen its
exports and output shrink so far this year, hurt by heavy
rains, lower fertilizer usage and a program to replace older
trees with new, more productive ones.
“The federation has not failed to fulfill any contract and
it will not do so. Colombia fulfills its obligations,”
federation director Gabriel Silva told reporters, adding that
there had been some delays in coffee shipments.
The key July arabica coffee futures contract trading on ICE
briefly climbed to an eight-month high of $1.3805 per lb
following the news, but quickly pared its gains. The market has
been supported by fund buying and a weaker U.S. dollar.
Colombia, a top producer of high-quality, mild arabicas,
reported recently that its output dropped 61 percent in April
to 345,000 60-kg bags from a year earlier while exports fell 40
percent to 550,000 bags from the same month a year ago.
Silva said Colombia plans to import 500,000 and 600,000
bags of coffee from Ecuador, Peru and Brazil in 2009 to meet
domestic demand. So far this year the Andean country has
imported 144,000 bags.
Colombia has imported coffee annually since 2004 for
internal consumption.
of the year to reach production of 10.5 million to 11.5 million
bags in 2009. The group has forecast coffee production will
reach 17 million bags by 2014. (Reuters)