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Colombian traders at pains to find coffee

BOGOTA: Colombian private exporters are struggling to find enough coffee to meet their April commitments because local growers will not sell them a single bean until the internal price rises.

"We can't buy any coffee," said one trader, adding that nearly half of his shipments to roasters overseas would likely be delayed a couple of days as a result.

The federation opened registrations for April shipment for both itself and private exporters on March 20.

Growers throughout the country are withholding their coffee as they eagerly wait for the National Coffee Growers Committee to raise the internal price for the commodity at its next meeting Monday, April 15.

They have been pressuring the committee to increase the price in order to get more money to pay off their huge debts, which total more than 200 billion pesos.

The managing director the National Coffee Growers Federation told reporters Monday he hoped the committee would be able to adjust the price to 201,500 pesos per 125-kilogram load from the current 190,000 pesos.

Jorge Cardenas, who sits on the committee along with Finance Minister Guillermo Perry, said the committee was waiting for the results of a study on how the price of coffee had been behaving on the world market before making a decision.

Another trader said he had also had problems with the country's leftist guerrillas, who had prevented him from sending coffee to port during a violent campaign to force workers to join a national strike to protest against the government earlier this week.

He said the rebels had sent him a letter "politely" advising him that they would burn any truck he tried to dispatch to port on Monday or Tuesday.

"Things are back to normal now but I lost two days nevertheless," said the trader, who gets most of his coffee from Santander, a northeastern province with a strong guerrilla presence.

The country's three rebel movements burned buses and trucks, detonated small bombs and clashed with soldiers and police as they tried to frighten people into staying home.

Apart from killing more than 20 people, forcing stores to remain closed in some small towns and paralyzing bus services along secondary highways, the campaign did not achieve very much.

None of the exporters consulted by Reuters were surprised by the revised production forecast given by Cardenas earlier this week.

"It was what we expected," said one of them. "We had been hearing for some time that it would be smaller as a result of the rains and the borer worm."

Speaking to reporters after the committee's meeting Monday, Cardenas said the country would likely produce 12.5 million 60-kilogram bags during the 1996 calendar year -- 1.0 million less than what had earlier been forecast.

But another exporter said he suspected production would probably be 2.0 million bags lower.

"He has to give a more favorable figure for political reasons," he said.-Reuter