Tanzanian Coffee Prices Rise in September

At the most recent coffee auction in Moshi, Tanzania, the average price of Tanzanian grown coffee rose: The cost of arabica went up by $2.23 per 50kg bag whilst the cost of robusta jumped up by $4.57 per bag.

During the auction, 21,154 bags of arabica were put forward for sale and a total of 20,331 were sold. However, this represents a slight decrease from the beginning of the month when 23,236 bags were offered.

So could the price rise be down an absence of coffee?

Quite possibly.

The amount of robusta made available this time around was a miserly 483 bags, a drop of 2,500 bags.

Considering that Tanzania relies upon coffee’s export revenues, this obviously isn’t good news at all. And according to the Tanzania Coffee Board’s (TCB) Director General Adolph Kumburu, current output levels are well below their stated aims thanks to a mixture of poor weather, poor crop control and smuggling.

Kumburu has also suggested that many farmers are beginning to abandon coffee as their main crop due to low monetary rewards.

This leaves the TCB’s long-term plan almost in tatters. An overreaching scheme was launched back in 2011 which would hopefully see the coffee production increase “from the present average of 50,000 tonnes to 80,000 tonnes by 2016 [and] 100,000 tonnes by 2021.”

In the year leading up to June 2015, the Bank of Tanzania has recorded a total of 45,700 tonnes of coffee were exported and that figure was down from 2013-14’s total of 49,700.

Sometimes, rising prices aren’t a good sign.