Vietnam, the world's largest pepper exporter, expects its 2005 shipments of the spice to ease slightly from this year's projected 95,000 tonnes due to adverse weather and a reduced crop, an industry executive said. Of this year's forecast shipments, 5,000 tonnes would be stocks carried over from last year, when Vietnam shipped 74,400 tonnes of pepper, Do Ha Nam, chairman of the Vietnam Pepper Association, told Reuters late on Tuesday.
Nam gave no forecast figure for next year's exports, saying only that shipments would be lower than this year. "There is a drought going on in the growing area and growers are also shifting part of their land to other purposes," Nam said.
He was referring to a shift from pepper growing into the property business on Phu Quiche island, a tourist resort off Vietnam's southern province of Kien Giang a key pepper growing area where land has become a hot investment choice this year.
Vietnam's pepper export figures normally do not include sales across the border to China and Cambodia, which the association estimated at around 10,000 tonnes each year. Nam said pepper harvesting would start on time in February 2005.
The harvest normally ends in June. Pepper traders in Vietnam said the stockpile had been thinning. Vietnam's total output this year was estimated at 100,000 tonnes, a target industry official said was meant for 2010.
High production has led to speculation that supplies from Vietnam will further weigh on global prices, languishing at an average of $1,400 a tonne, down 30 percent from $2,000 last year.
But Vietnam has said it aims to keep output steady by avoiding expansion of the growing area. Nam said the European market accounted for the bulk of Vietnamese pepper exports, making up 38 percent of the shipment in the first 10 months of 2004, followed by 18.3 percent to the United States.
"The market is expanding and 72 countries are now buying Vietnamese pepper. It has surpassed coffee," said the chairman, who also runs a coffee business at a state-run export company.
Vietnam, the world's largest robusta coffee producer and exporter, sells its beans to 67 countries, he said. No comparative figures for last year were immediately available. The association's forecast for pepper exports for the whole of 2004 is lower than a government estimate for the first 11 months.
Last month, the General Statistics Office estimated pepper exports in the January-November period would surge 48.8 percent year-on-year to 104,000 tonnes. Turnover rose 40.8 percent from a year earlier to $141 million.