Coffee consumption rising in Nepal

The Tea and Coffee Development Board of Nepal has, in the past couple of days, announced that their export figure for this seasonal year has decline. But if you think that the picture painted in the opening sentence is about to be followed with doom and gloom, you’d be wrong. Admittedly, export levels did fall short of the expected targets, but more and more domestically produced coffee was sold internally due to the nation’s coffee consumption growing.

 “Though we don’t have the exact figures, filter coffee has started replacing instant coffee these days,” noted Raman Prasad Pathak, an executive director of the Nepalese Development Board.

“The domestic market [is] spreading and has tremendous growth potential,” he continued.

It is believe that there are 140 establishments within the Kathmandu Valley region serving freshly made coffee now and demand in other major cities – such as Pokhara and Biratnagar – is growing. It is clear that there’s an increasing demand that needs supply.

“Three years ago,” begins Krishna Ghimire, a coffee tradesman; “I used to export coffee to various counties. [But] as the market demand [within Nepal] has been rising, I started selling it locally.

“We sold around 150 tonnes of coffee last year against 75 tonnes the year before,” he added.

Domestic consumption is believed to be in the region of 430 tonnes.

It was also announced that revenues for exported Nepalese coffee grew substantially – up from $454,000 to $525,000 – even though the physical amount sold outside of the country fell by around 20 percent.

Financially, this is great news for the Tea and Coffee Development Board, though they are aware that production as a whole can be improved. Market analysts have said that exports were also hit my limited local production and as such, the board hope to help Nepalese farmers double their output within the next five years.

photo: “Nepal landscape” by US. Dep.of Agriculture – Licensed under Public domain via Wiki Commons.