Coffee prices show mixed trend: report
Coffee berries. A board projects 1.15 million (50-kilo) bags to be harvested. PHOTO|FILE
Dar es Salaam. Annual world commodity prices of Robusta coffee during the year that ended on November 30, 2017 increased by 18.4 per cent compared to the prices for the year to November 30, 2016 – thanks to higher global demand.
However, the price for the Arabica coffee variety went down by 6.1 per cent during the same period.
According to the December monthly economic review of the Bank of Tanzania (BoT), the price for Robusta coffee went up to $2.3 a kilo in November 2017, up from $1.9 a kilo in 2016.
On the other hand, the price for Arabica declined to $3.4 a kilo, down from $3.6 a kilo.
However, the central bank’s review shows that the world market price of Robusta coffee in November 2017 was $2 a kilo, representing a 7.1 per cent decrease from $2.2 in November 2016.
At the same time, the world market price for Arabica saw the slight increase of 0.3 per cent from November 2016 to November 2017.
According to the latest auction at the Moshi Coffee Exchange, conducted on December 21, 2017, mild coffee was sold at an average price of $133.06 for a Grade-AA 50kg bag – the highest coffee grade – and $116.83 per 50kg bag of Grade-C, the lowest coffee grade.
The average price for other coffee grades were $132.16 per 50-kilo bag for Grade-A; $135.48 for Grade-AB; $129.90 for Grade-B, and $129.90 for Grade-PB. For its part, the Tanzania Coffee Board (TCB) states that indicative prices at the farm gate were Sh3,308 a kilo for Arabica coffee, and Sh1,625 for Robusta coffee.
“Domestic coffee consumption is growing at an average of between 1.5-and-2 per cent a year, as the coffee-drinking culture gradually takes root in urban and peri-urban areas,” the annual TCB 2017 report on coffee, released by TCB last September, says.
The report also states that the annual per capita coffee consumption in Tanzania is 0.06 kilo, a measly seven per cent of the country’s total coffee production of between 30,000 and 40,000 tonnes each year – about 70 per cent of which is Arabica, 30 per cent Robusta.
The TCB report says that coffee for the market is projected to increase to 1.15 million (50-kilo) bags during the 2017/18 harvesting season, up from 1.05 million bags in the previous season.
