Robusta coffee sales from Vietnam have been slow as buyers seek deliveries from April and exporters hesitate over distant contracts, traders said on Tuesday. The market had expected farmers would sell more for cash to prepare for the Tet Lunar New Year festival from February 16 to 21.
"Exporters are now saying they cannot buy much from farmers as prices have been higher this year," a trader with a foreign firm in Ho Chi Minh City said. With domestic market prices ranging from 21,100 dong to 22,100 dong so far this year, 20 percent above the prices the same time last year, Vietnamese sellers are in no hurry for cash.
On Tuesday, robusta eased to 21,900 dong ($1.36) per kilogram in the key-growing province of Daklak, from 22,100 dong on Monday, but it is at least 17 percent above the year-ago price.
Foreign buyers said they were in the market for deliveries from April, but Vietnamese sellers did not agree with bids. Quotations of Vietnamese robusta grade two, 5 percent black and broken beans stood at $105 to $120 a tonne to London's May robusta contracts while bids stood at $130 a tonne.
May contracts ended $10 up at $1,599 a tonne on Monday. Vietnamese coffee was offered at $1,480-$1,490 a tonne, on a free-on-board basis, while bids stood at $1,470. Vietnam could have at least 7 million bags left by the end of month, based on estimates of the export volume and crop output. October 2006 to January 2007 exports grew 32.6 percent on a year earlier to 6.23 million bags, government figures showed.
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