C American Group Agrees To Juggle Coffee Quotas

Central American bloc members of the Association of Coffee Producing Countries (ACPC) agreed here on Monday to juggle around 1,00,000 60-kg bags of export quotas for January-June this year among themselves.

Honduran delegate Fernando Montes and El Salvadors Herbert De Sola explained the modification of the regional groups quotas was to avoid certain countries having quota but not being able to fill it and other countries having too little quota and coffee waiting to be sold.

We are fine tuning thats all, the amount we are talking about is about 1,00,000 bags, De Sola told journalists at the end of a four-hour meeting of Central American ACPC members, and Colombia and Ecuador, here at the most famous Mayan ruins in Honduras.

 

We agreed to consolidate our export quotas in the sense that countries will continue to observe the set limits, but if one country is behind (and unable to meet its limit) other countries could gain access to that quota, Montes said.

Montes stressed it did not mean export limits for the region would be exceeded. It is about mutually compensating each other so that the final regional total is the one originally agreed.

ACPC nations have in place an export limit programme through until June this year. In a recent ACPC full council gathering in Rio de Janeiro, member nations decided to cut January-December, 1997 export limits by 1.3 million 60-kg bags.

This second, regional tweaking of the original ACPC plan, is aimed at controlling market supplies, comes into effect immediately and does not need full council approval, De Sola said. Consumer nation say the measure is aimed at driving up prices further, despite a recent spectacular coffee rally.

Montes and De Sola said the formal coffee bodies of each country, such as the Honduran Coffee Institute and the Salvadoran Coffee Council, will oversee the allocation switchings as necessary.

It will be easy because we are constantly in touch with each other anyway, De Sola said.

Montes said for Honduras it would probably mean around 75,000 60-bags of quota will be handed over to another regional member and that the amount be taken into account in any new ACPC accord beyond June.

We will still be harvesting in May and that will come out in July and August (after the close of the current July-June export cycle) so it makes no sense to have quota we are not going to use. We do not want to leave the market short, he added.