Vietnam opens first coffee trading center
18/12/2006 15:35
Vietnam, the world's second biggest coffee producer, is expecting to
further boost its coffee trade and export by putting the first national coffee
exchange center into operation, local newspaper Vietnam Investment Review
reported today.
The Buon Ma Thuot Coffee Exchange Center (BCEC) in central
highlands Dac Lac province, Vietnam's coffee hub, established in mid-December,
initially handles domestic transactions with a standardized quality management
system. In the second phase, it will handle direct electronic transactions with
the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE), the world's biggest
coffee trading floor.
"The exchange will bring Vietnam's coffee trading to a
new professional level, creating a level playing field for traders, and will
better protect coffee growers," said Van Thanh Huy, chairman of Vietnam's Coffee
and Cocoa Association.
With a four-hectare storage system, the center
prevents forced "mass sales" due to a lack of storage which has hurt prices in
previous years. By using the storage service, farmers can receive preferential
credits to reinvest in cultivation and select the best sales option via public
bids at the center.
For BCEC membership, enterprises must have minimum
registered capital of 5 billion Vietnamese dong (VND) (US$312,500) and a minimum
export or processing volume of 5,000 tons of coffee in the last three years.
Local brokers should have a minimum registered capital of 3 billion VND
(US$187,500), and foreign ones US$2 million.
Now, the domestic market's 33
coffee trading businesses use only three local brokers, said the
report.
Vietnam exported 767,000 tons of coffee worth US$910 million in the
first 11 months of this year, down 6 percent in volume but up 38.1 percent in
value against the same period last year, according to the country's General
Statistics Office.
Xinhua
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