[LINK] "Vietnam May Have 400,000 Tons of Unsold Coffee"

[rfmcdonald]

Those who know me will know I think this a tragedy.

Coffee growers in Vietnam may hold as much as 400,000 metric tons of unsold beans, equivalent to about a third of the nation’s latest crop, as the government starts its first stockpiling program to counter falling prices.

The volume of unsold coffee of “between 300,000 and 400,000 tons is pretty high compared with 100,000 to 200,000 tons at the same time in previous years,” said Pham Dinh Khai, director of An Giang Coffee Co.’s Buon Ma Thuot branch. “This program is good in general, but a bit late in terms of timing.”

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung last week told the central bank to oversee a 200,000 ton program to boost robusta prices that have lost 12 percent over the past year. The beans from the world’s largest robusta producer will be held for six months at most, potentially overlapping with the arrival in the global market of output from Brazil and Indonesia.

“We should have this program undertaken at the peak of the harvest in November, December,” An Giang Coffee’s Khai said from Buon Ma Thuot City in Dak Lak, the country’s main coffee- growing area. Khai spoke by phone late yesterday.

The volume of unsold beans remains high, representing about 30 percent of the most recent harvest, according to Bui Hung Manh, head of the business department at Tay Nguyen Coffee Investment, Import and Export Co.