Cote d'Ivoire: The purchase price of coffee falls by 21% to 550 FCFA/Kg

The Ivorian government announced on Wednesday the purchase price on the edge of the field of coffee which drops from 700 FCFA to 550 FCFA per kilogram for the 2020/2021 campaign which opens on December 28th. This 21% drop in the price offered to farmers is explained by the poor situation on the international market with prices that have been falling since the last campaign.

Indeed, the authorities point out that it is 32 billion FCFA in subsidies that had been granted for the 2019/2020 season which has just ended in order to maintain the price of 700 FCFA / kg.

Reputed to be more painful and restrictive, coffee cultivation has been abandoned in recent decades for other agricultural speculation deemed more lucrative, even if in recent years the government is trying to revive this industry. A situation that has had an impact on production, which today is a far cry from the 400,000 tons of cherries produced in the 1970s. Over this last season (2019/2020), production fell by nearly 12% to 83,003 tons against 94,258 tons in the previous season, according to official figures. Also, the income received by growers has declined by 12% to 58 billion CFA francs over the period.

In 2013, the Conseil Café Cacao (CCC, the industry regulator) announced a strategy to revive the coffee sector at a cost of 8.3 billion FCFA. An ambitious plan that aimed at a target of 200,000 tons by 2018 and which clearly did not have the desired effect.

Cote d'Ivoire, which in the early 2000s was Africa's leading coffee producer, was ousted in 2003 by Ethiopia, then Uganda, and was ranked 3rd in Africa in 2018.

Jean Mermoz Konandi

Publié le 24/12/20 20:11