TEGUCIGALPA: Coffee exports from Honduras plunged 18.5 percent in June compared with the period last year, national coffee institute IHCAFE said on Friday, prompting exporters to cut their forecasts for foreign shipments this season.
June sales from Central America’s top coffee exporter reached 592,530 60-kg bags, down from 726,893 60-kg bags in the same month last year, IHCAFE said. Shipments during the first nine months of the 2015-16 harvest totaled 4.368 million 60-kg bags, down 3.3 percent from the same nine-month period in the 2014-15 crop.
The smuggling of Honduran coffee into Guatemala and Mexico caused the drop, said Miguel Pon, chief executive of ANACAFEH, the National Association of Honduran Coffee Exporters, adding that Honduras could not reach its 2015-2016 export forecast. Honduras expects to export 5.52 million 60-kg bags this season compared with 5.02 million in the 2014-2015 cycle.
Pon said he expects exports of between 5.137 million and 5.213 million 60-kg bags this season. An IHCAFE source said the institute was revising its forecast, but did not yet have precise figures. The coffee season in Central America and Mexico, which together produce about a fifth of the world’s arabica beans, runs from October through September. Honduras, like its neighbors in Central America and Mexico is recovering from the roya blight, which causes leaves and the grain to fall from the plant.
