The coffee industry is looking forward to the crafting of a long-term strategy for expanding coffee production in the Philippines.
The Philippine Coffee Board, Inc. (PCB) said in a report that the Department of Agriculture has allocated initially P163 million for 2012 to help the industry propagate coffee.
The department’s National Agricultural and Fisheries Council, or NAFC, has also started meeting with PCB chairman Nicholas A. Matti on the development of a Philippine Coffee Roadmap for 2012 and beyond, the industry group said.
The Philippines is also now a member of the Asean Coffee Federation (ACF, which was established in Pattaya in 2010 and formalized in Pakse, Laos, in January 2011.)
The ACF membership, PCB said, will provide a platform for coffee-producing countries in Southeast Asia to work together, especially with the coming down of import tariffs in 2015.
“The Philippines would do well to develop niche products this early,” Matti said in an interview. “We don’t have the volume to compete with our Asean neighbors on regular coffee. Developing specialty blends and value-added products would be our best strategy to keep coffee farmers earning even if cheap coffee imports come flooding in.”
The PCB is also promoting coffee-related businesses, especially in the countryside, to give coffee farmers a ready market in their own localities.
PCB president Pacita U. Juan said on the sidelines of the 4th National Coffee Summit held recently in Makati City that, among other activities, she will be giving a whole-day seminar on October 22 at the Enderun Colleges on how to open a coffee shop.
Juan said that she is also organizing women entrepreneurs in the coffee industry to give them better access to assistance and niche markets.
The Philippines, which used to export coffee, grows all four varieties of coffee: Robusta, arabica, excelsa, and liberica, under which the well-known “Barako” coffee is classified.
The country presently imports around 40,000 metric tons of coffee from Indonesia and Vietnam, according to industry data.
The Philippines’ coffee industry was self-sufficient until 1998, with producers even able to export to such countries as the United States, Japan and Korea. In 1999, however, market price for coffee fell steeply due to overproduction in Vietnam.
Coffee producers in the Philippines began abandoning the crop and the country has since become a net importer.