HCMC – The Vietnam Coffee and Cocoa Association, or Vicofa, has asked the Government for permission to buy between 300,000 and 500,000 tons of coffee from the start of the upcoming harvest as a measure to support prices for farmers.
Luong Van Tu, chairman of Vicofa, told the Daily on Thursday that the amount under the retention scheme would vary depending on the fluctuation of prices during the 2010-2011 harvest lasting from later this month until early next year.
In the previous season, the Government assisted traders in stocking 200,000 tons by providing soft loans for them to buy coffee from farmers. However, the scheme did not work well as traders were able to buy only one quarter of the planned amount since the scheme was approved too late when farmers had almost sold out their crop.
“Given experiences from the previous season, we have proposed the Government to start the coffee retention scheme earlier, and therefore, it is expected that prices would be higher in the beginning of the harvest compared to last year,” he said.
However, the Government’s assistance to coffee traders this year would not be in the form of subsidized lending as in the previous year, said an official of the Department of Agro-Forestry, Fishery and Salt Processing under the agriculture ministry.
Rather, the Government will help traders access capital sources to buy coffee, said Le Xuan, head of the department. He added that coffee traders would have to buy the farm produce directly from farmers if they want to gain assistance.
The coffee amount planned for retention this year can be seen as substantial, as Vietnam produces around only one million tons of coffee a year.
