24 Oct 2006

PNG Coffee production records 30% drop

12:13 pm on 24 October 2006

A report says Papua New Guinea's coffee production over the past eight months to August this year has dropped by 30%.

The Coffee Industry Corporation report says the drop is due to the low coffee prices and only a slight appreciation of the kina against the US dollar.

The report says the total number of bags for the last eight months to August was only 783,989 bags, compared to over a million for the same period last year.

The National newspaper reports total coffee exports were down 11% on the previous year, to under 1 million bags.

As a result, coffee export earnings for 2005/ 2006 fell by 11% to 135 million US dollars, the lowest in 12 years.