East African Business Week (Kampala)
David Mugabe
30 July 2007
Kampala — Uganda coffee exports fetched a total US$24.3million in the month of June 2007, a report from the country's coffee authority, the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) has showed.
This represents an increase of almost 67% from $14.6million in June 2006 to $24.3million in June 2007.
A total of 244,789 60-kilogramme bags had been exported at end of June 2007, representing an increase of 30.6% over the 187,448 bags recorded in June last year.
But coffee exports in the last year amounted to 2,535,523 bags ($228.5million), representing an overall increase of 20.5% in volume and 31.7% in value compared to a similar period last year.
Exports to the European Union (EU) countries dominated exports at 188,979 bags, an increase of 26.2% from 149,245 bags recorded in May 2007.
Coffee exports to Sudan also improved from 32,900 (17.83%) in May 2007 to 45,850 bags (18.7%). Coffee to Africa as a whole totaled 49,370 bags, which was 20.2% of total export quantity.
Figures from UCDA indicate that between October to June 2006/07, coffee exports totaled 2,025,139 bags.
Broken down, Robusta figures rose to 1,574,338 bags while Arabica volumes rose to 450,806 bags.
This represents an overall increase in volume of 35.7% compared with 1,491,940 bags that comprised 993,788 bags of Robusta and 498,152 bags last year.
The volume of Robusta rose by 58% while that of Arabica fell by almost 10%.
"As has always been reiterated, the increase in Robusta quantities is attributed to the re-planting programme under the government's strategic intervention, which was given support by good farm-gate prices," read the report.
The report indicates that the monthly average realised price was $0.166 per kilogramme, which was a 2.5% rise compared to May 2007.
The report also indicates that fund and speculative buying dominated both markets during the month in response to an anticipated increase in demand for the coffee against a shortage of supplies especially in Vietnam and Brazil.
World production for the crop year 2006/07 has been put at 121.5million bags while consumption is between 119 to 120 million bags.
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