Spekulation: Vietnam Coffee-Supply limited on speculation, price falls
Quelle: ICO – CoffeeClub Network/Reuters – Rodrigo Pasquini – 29/Mar/2011
Vietnamese coffee prices dropped nearly 6 percent this week on limited domestic sales as speculators held back stocks to wait for prices to rebound, traders said on Tuesday.
Most coffee farmers have sold out their stocks to export firms and buying agents, who are better financed and often hold back beans for speculation, as Vietnam has nearly ended the first half of its 2010/2011 coffee crop.
“Vietnam now still has around 20-25 percent of the crop left in the country,” a trader in Ho Chi Minh City said after conducting a field trip to survey on production in the Central Highlands.
As such, the current stock level in the country would be equivalent to 3.95-4.94 million 60-kg bags, going by a crop output of 19.75 million bags found in a Reuters poll on March 1.
Coffee exports between October 2010 and this month, the first half of the 2010/2011 crop year, would reach an estimated 13.32 million bags, government statistics showed, up 28.4 percent from the corresponding period a year ago. [ID:nHAN194974]
“While export prices fall, domestic prices are still high and there is much speculation now,” another trader at a foreign company in Ho Chi Minh City said.
He estimated the current stock at 6.67 million bags, half of which was in the hands of foreign firms operating in Vietnam, while another 1.67 million bags are kept by exporters and the rest held by farmers and speculators.
DEVALUATION FEAR
“Rich people do not like to sell (coffee) now, they are waiting for prices to rise,” the first trader said, adding that fears the government may move again this year to devalue the currency lead many to hold onto physical assets like coffee.
Vietnam conducted a major devaluation of the dong, its non-convertible currency, by 8.5 percent against the dollar in February.
The market in Vietnam, the world’s top robusta producer, has switched to using London’s July contract for pricing as roasters have their purchase well covered for May, traders said.
Discounts narrowed to $60 a tonne on Tuesday from $70 a tonne on Monday, placing Vietnamese robusta grade 2, 5 percent black and broken at $2,346-$2,356 a tonne, free-on-board, for outright shipment, about 6 percent below $2,463-$2,533 a week ago.
On domestic markets, robusta eased to between 47.3 million and 47.6 million dong ($2,267-2,281) a tonne on Tuesday in the largest growing province of Daklak, from 47.5-48 million dong early last week.
Farmers in the Central Highlands coffee belt have been watering trees during the peak of the dry season. Several unseasonal rains earlier this month have helped them save the watering costs, traders said.
The rainy season would arrive in the Central Highlands in early May as usual, state forecasters said in a report published by state-run media this week.
via CoffeeClub Network: Vietnam Coffee-Supply limited on speculation, price falls.
In: 1. AKTUELLE KAFFEETHEMEN, Börse/Spekulation
