SAO PAULO: Brazil will auction roughly 188,000 bags of arabica coffee on Thursday morning from government stocks, the agriculture ministry’s crop supply agency Conab said in a statement on Tuesday.
The government, which is in need of revenues to cover a growing budget shortfall, has been trying to sell – largely unsuccessfully – some of the 1.5 million 60-kg bags of arabica coffee that it holds in public stocks. The coffee was acquired from producers during the 2009/2010 harvest and is mostly green to yellow, hard cup, with 26 to 86 defects.
It currently sits stacked in Conab warehouses across the coffee belt. Conab has been holding regular coffee auctions from public stocks since late in 2015 but all except the last one earlier in early February flopped due to high minimum prices that the market snubbed. Even the last auction only sold a fraction of the bags on offer.