Vietnam's coffee trade has slowed this week as prices eased and stocks became thinner after a brief rally in sales last week when Vietnamese farmers released coffee to cash on domestic price gains, traders said on Tuesday.
A kilogram of robustness firmed to 22,300-22,400 dong ($1.38-$1.39) last on Thursday in Vietnam's central highland city of Buon Ma Thou following a rise in London futures market on March 28, but fell back gradually to 21,900-22,000 dong on Tuesday.
"The selling was good briefly last week thanks to good prices but stocks then thinned out," said a dealer with a foreign firm in Ho Chi Minh City, but added that he received few export quotations so far. The harvest ended in January and Vietnam, the world's second-largest coffee producer after Brazil, has been working on the next crop cycle with the next harvest due in October.
Vietnamese robusta grade 2, 5 percent black and broken was offered at a discount of $90 a tonne to London's July contract, while bids stood at $95 a tonne. The quotations meant the beans were priced at $1,445 to $1,450 a tonne, on free-on-board Saigon Port basis, lower than $1,450 to $1,460 per tonne last on Tuesday.
Vietnam has exported 11.77 million 60-kg bags between October 2006 and March 2007, or 59 percent of the country's total coffee available for the current crop year that ends in September.
The total coffee data is based on traders' estimate of the last harvest that produced 19 million bags plus a stock carried over from the previous crop of 0.8 million bags. Traders estimated that, of the 8 million bags left in the country, up to 5 million bags had already been kept in Ho Chi Minh City warehouses by foreign buyers and Vietnamese exporters.