Png Coffee Sales Improve

Papua New Guinea Coffee Marketing Board chairman Mr. Lloyd Hurrell, was optimistic in April that PNG planters were beginning to emerge from the current depression caused by low coffee prices and stockpiled supplies on the world markets.

“The stockpiling is getting less—they’re eating into the reserves— and PNG has plans to help ease the situation,” he said in Port Moresby.

PNG had a surplus of about 10,000 tons in March (out of a total production for the year of 30,000 tons), but the board was beginning to sell it to new markets and had good prospects for further sales. It is unlikely that it will all be sold quickly enough for growers, so the board has decided on a crop acquisition scheme, to buy unsold coffee from planters and hold it until the market improves.

It now has to arrange finance—in the shape of a guarantee—and PNG’s new Cabinet will be invited to involve itself with this as one of its first tasks.

The board has also recently ruled that no coffee other than forward orders can be sold for other than world prices in future. This is to stop cheap exports to Australia. It is not likely to have an immediate effect because most PNG coffee has been sold to September under forward ordering.

PNG coffee production is now politically sensitive. About 73 per cent, of all production comes from native growers, who currently are angry at the depressed situation. The coffee-growing areas support a popu lation of three quarters of a million people in PNG.